New Taquwami: “All My Life”
In his relatively brief career, Tokyo’s Taquwami has explored a lot of sonic ground. He’s made maximal sounds, fragile songs, sample-heavy dance numbers and heady tunes that sound like holding a particularly trippy seashell up to your ear. And that’s not even counting the directions he’s splintered off with his Occult You project. His latest piece of production, “All My Life,” features plenty of his trademarks – vocal samples turned syrupy, a general electronic wooziness – but sees Taquwami trying a few new things out. He has been incorporating touches of R&B into his music for a while now – this year’s Blurrywonder EP imagined what the genre would sound like if thrown into a synth-powered tornado – but “All My Life” comes closest to sounding like proper R&B, the minimal beat that dominates the first half of the song even bringing to mind a hazier take on Usher’s “Climax.” Even those vocal samples – still warped to near alien mumbles – now sound like whispers in the dark, giving this a sense of intimacy. It all blooms later in the song and approaches more familiar territory, but “All My Life” features some nice new wrinkles too. Listen below.