DESCRIPTION:
This is the vinyl rip for Midori Takada - Through The Looking Glass

One of the most enticing and truly intoxicating pieces of recent years, Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass is a very dreamlike journey in 4 chapters. Beyond its very impressive soundscapes and overall atmosphere, it's well known for its innovative recording techniques. Here's some information about how the tracks came to be:

------------------------------
The title of the album, Through The Looking Glass, was adopted from Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland. In the logic of Lewis Carroll, who was also a mathematician, one can discern a word beyond personal expression that has no relation to personal sentiment of desire. Sound separates itself from personal expression and in sound itself lies the possibility of substance. Midori says: "Within the tracks, numbers are intertwined symbolically - they are fluid while the tempo is ever-changing. On the reverse side, all the melodies are overturned. Through this process, it is constructed and formulated into a system. As the structure of this music became more system-based, I tried to disengage it from any self-expression. That is why I named this album Through The Looking Glass. The reflection on the mirror seems to show something, but I did not want to indulge in that. I wanted rather to force discernment of my true self that was beyond the reflection."

The "different directions" she used to explore that concept are ingenious. On the first track, "Mr. Henri Rousseau's Dream," she created a three-dimensional sound sculpture by carefully taking the distance between the microphone and each instrument into account. Takada says that she was trying to construct a perspective in sound." On "Crossing", Takada overdubbed an initial rhythm over a new rhythm, placing two performances that were still physically reverberating through the performer on top of one another, constructing a minimal, but heavy, percussive edifice. On the track "Trompe-l'oeil", Takada used offset rhythms to blur and expand that percussive resonance of the instruments, thickening the sound color. This track is also notable for the fact that Takada performed this composition using only a Cole bottle, bells, and a reed organ with a foot pedal! She describes the final track, "Catastrophe ε" as "an accelerando from start to finish, without allowing tempo and time to slip into one place". That Accelerando is thhe most aggressive progression on the album. As the tempo gradually increases, the piano and reed organ slowly build a wall of sound. The acceleration directs the listener's attention inward, towards the music itself, as opposed to its performance.
------------------------------

I was very pleasantly surprised to find this little rarity on display on some shelf in a new nifty little boutique record store in my town, and picked it up right away as I was searching for it for quite a while. To me this is one of the most astounding, ground breaking records of our era. The history and the process of making this record and how carefully it was crafted (whether it's the philosophy of it or the fact that each instrument was layered infinitely to compensate any errors that could not be erased since it was recorded analogically) just add to the mix. If you will - give it a good listen with a good headset or system, in a dark room, and wait till the nearly Koyaanisquatsi-ish ending will make your heart pound with the force of a thousand suns.

Perfect for: M E D I T A T I O N

Format: LP

Please support the artists! If you dug it as much as I did when I first heard it on YouTube as well, please consider supporting the artist by getting it here: http://paltoflats.com/release/midori-takada-through-the-looking-glass

All materials presented on this channel are copyrighted by their respective copyright owners, and are subject to use for informational purposes only. If you want this removed, please contact me and I will remove it as soon as possible.