Kenji Kariu - Rain / Water

Format: LP
Catalogue No.: BRD52LP
Barcode: 5056688825966
Release Date: 26 Jul 2024
Genre: Alternative

Rain/Water is the fourth album by Tokyo’s Kariu Kenji. Following 2021’s Sekai, also on Bruit Direct Disques, rain/water is a gorgeous haze of song, a modern driftwork that’s creatively rich, and full of fleeting sensation. These twelve lush pop songs point in multiple directions, outwards to bossa nova, modern R&B and soul, ambient bliss-outs, city pop confections, and electronica. But rain/water also has a sly experimentalism at its core, the kind of experimentation that doesn’t need to call attention to itself, but that exists ‘between the cracks’ of the songs – in small, curious gestures of arrangement, in a sudden twist in melody, or an unexpected detour in a song’s narrative. In this way, they share something of the stylistic free range in other great recent avant-pop moments – think, perhaps, of the music of Maher Shalal Hash Baz; Stereolab’s more late-night, hermetic moments, or High Llamas’ recent Hey Panda.

 Tracklisting: 1. I Saw You In A Dream 2. Water 3. Boat 4. And Then There Was Light 5. Sweets Dream 6. Going Through 7. Flower Name 8. Convenience Store 9. Sand 10. Bubbles 11. Spider 12. Umbrella