- Ophelia is an eccentric take on two styles we've heard a lot of lately: dancehall and electro. It's from Kym Sugiru, a Tokyo-based producer whose debut—not unlike Diskotopia, the label releasing it—is pleasingly slippery and digressive. "Tanka," the electro track, has a nimble kalimba pattern that winds through coarse snares. Some details, such as the low-volume vocal babble, are almost imperceptible. Others, like the snippets of chat from Japanese high school students (apparently discussing poetry homework), slip in and out of a busy foreground, where you'll also hear harmonica, electronic cicada chirps and wafting hi-tech soul harmonies.
There's more room on the wonky cosmic dancehall of "Ophelia (Floriography)," but Sugiru's quirky musical signatures remain. Onbeat tonal slides, rubbery rhythmic accents, dubby echo trails and mumbled nonsense all drift happily in the A-side's crooked currents. Its crunchy, not-quite-lo-fi ambience is grazed and scratched by scrapyard one-shots, but another balmy stroke—this time, faint choral vocals—takes the edge off.
Tracklist01. Ophelia (Floriography)
02. Tanka