Miko, Parade (Plop)

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A breed and gender of performer that seems almost indigenous to Japan is the bird-voiced, whispery female vocalist. This may be a false wish-fulfillment caused by too much investment in the Orientalist geisha mystique, but it is a fact that a lot of whispery female vocalists are of Japanese origin. But then the paradox - at its best, their music, however discreet, is complex and as lyrically mature as anyone you care to compare with, male or female.

Miko is one of these girls with a voice as clear as a mountain brook and delicate as the powdered wings of a butterfly. Her debut showcases her voice in surroundings all dressed up in flourescent pinks and greens and yellows and bedazzled with toy electonica.

But it is not all calliopes and candy canes. Poptronica on the outside indeed, this playful sounding music - she dubbed her album Parade because she wanted to offer her audience something equally entertaining - commands serious attention as repeated listenings reveal a highly accomplished organizer of sound. This is my "arts-and-crafts project" of the year - Miko takes what appear to be deceptively straightforward ingredients - her voice, an electric guitar, some inexpensive machines and beat boxes - and creates some highly inventive music.

The album opens with her vocals, double and triple tracked, emerging out of a brightly coloured forest of acoustic and electronic vegetation. Throughout the rest of the album she interweaves actual songs (lyrics in Japanese) with instrumental tracks in which her voice is but one of the instruments (and she plays all the instruments herself, to boot). One is a frenzied, kaleidoscopic swirl, another collages gusts of breathy, cotten-candy vocals with windy, pastel-coloured notes, and a third weaves starlight and rainbows into undulating tapestries.

An album that raises both a smile and an eyebrow.

http://www.naturbliss.jp