Lokai’s new album, Transition seems built upon John Cage’s philosophical “new music” approach that music, arguably like anything else, is simply events happening in time. Of course we, as music listeners, gauge value on how much those sonic events move us, and with Transition, Lokai masterfully constructs dark and beautiful music out of intriguing found sounds and a lo-fi mix of acoustic and electronic sounds.
The music on Transition unfolds slowly in the vacuum of space. A struck heating system, a single vibraphone hit, a strummed acoustic guitar chord, a prepared piano note twinkle pointillistically in and out of silence or against a backdrop of quiet tape hiss. At times, the sounds coalesce into steady meditative rhythms behind haunting sustained accordion and bent metallic resonances. At other times, the found sounds and analog electronics swell and fade in and out of silence, gradually exposing rhythmic patterns and vague melodic concepts.
One never gets the impression that these are simply sonic experiments. Each compositional structure is carefully architected, and within the hypnosis induced by the sounds, you notice subtleties that emerge almost imperceptibly from the sustained overtones or instrumental timbres. Most songs are kept to a few minutes so that even at its most abstract, the music is palatable and carries a sense of direction.
The result is an album that floats you through a delicate and haunting dreamlike world, alternately soothing and unnerving. A sort of soundtrack for the inside of your head, Lokai’s Transition is an experimental instrumental excursion that manages to be much more than a philosophical point. Rather, it’s great music that actually takes you somewhere emotionally.
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