The new album from Yasuyuki Uesugi drops today on Komponist, an imprint of the Last Night from Glasgow label, and it's the sort of thing that's nearly impossible to write about. Of course, I could describe the technical details of how this was captured direct to tape using analogue equipment, but that's a bit wonky. The release, Artificial Mass, rumbles and churns like the sound that machines might produce had they been programmed to compose. And yet, it's also strangely compelling.
"Industrial Society" grinds forward, an ominous swell coming closer and closer after swirling in the distance, while "Polluted Air" adds a beat to the process. The cut is nearly the most rudimentary form of dance music I could ever envision, while "Magnetic Force" throbs with a kind of bass-hum that feels oddly hypnotic. "Black Rain" skirts close to the basic beats of house music, while the closer, "Inanimate Object", feels a tiny bit like the backing track of something that Joy Division could have created in the Closer era.
The press materials list the equipment that Yasuyuki Uesugi used here, but the key takeaway is this bit of information: No pre-set settings are used in the creation of the music and so every track is unique at the time of capture. That makes this feel like a jazz performance, at least in terms of approach but not style, and it gives this all a quality of some kind of bizarre once-in-a-lifetime performance being undertaken. Fans of Non, Fad Gadget, and Cabaret Voltaire should find things to enjoy here, and the music works as pure music outside of the kind of genre-labels that come with a lot of baggage. In that sense, Artificial Mass feels timeless and rare.
Artificial Mass is out today via Komponist, an imprint of Last Night from Glasgow. Membership in the platform can be purchased here.