Marmalade Pa.Pa.

text

Pity that Ken Katsumata is such an unknown talent in the West. No one would confuse his playful electronica for a profound reinvention of the form. But his music is original and engaging, true to the uniquely Japanese concern for melody and form without pandering to recognizable archetypes. Katsumata bounces piping melodies and novel melodic diversions off clever rhythmic constructions of bass, beats, and shiny clangs. The tracks are fully developed and eventful but still spacious, allowing for later reshaping and interpretations such as submersed "Slippery Marmalade Dub (Marmalade Pa.Pa. Mumble Man Dubmix), Katsumata's own sonar sub-version of the titular charmer, or Suzukiski's worryingly abstract and destabilized "The War Of The Spirits." You can hear the intimations of a thousand possible directions in the bass-centered core of "Hari-Hari-Pig" and in the vibrant South Seas polyrhythms and kalimba-chime loops of "Ra-Pa-Su." And "Aq'ua Six," with its driving beat and digitally mangled chromatic instrumentation, could well be the birth of something new.