Himuro
Mild Fantasy Violence
(Zod)
Yoshiteru Himuro is a young electronic musician who has creating music since 1997 and in that time period has put out three releases on the UK Worm Interface label. Mild Fantasy Violence is his first full-length for the Zod label and continues his output of varied, crunchy, electronic that blends everything from 8-bit game sounds and instrumental hip hop to acid and old school techno.
Himuro resides in Japan and his mashed-up music (and the title of the album) does well to represent the gleeful collision of cultures (which in turn become a unique entity of their own) that his home country exudes. In a way, the release is sort of a soundtrack to the technicolor lights, crazy gameshows, and the odd assimilation of western culture that thrive in Japan. "My Beats Your Beats" opens the release with slurping rhythms and skittery hi-hats before launching into a thumping hip hop beat and filtered synths and acid squiggles. The album-titled "Mild Fantasy Violence" blends lighter IDM sounds (resembling the playful moments of Plaid) with multiple layers of squirty beat programming.
In other places, the album backs off a bit, and tracks like "Eat All" and "The Cracks In Your Monita" resemble the dense, hyper-glitched (but still atmospheric) work of Autechre from a couple years back (roughly around the release of their self-titled full length or EP7). "Sunrise Sunset" drops as the last track on the album and arrives as one of the best tracks on the album with a huge slathering of thick beats and a load of intertwining light melodies.
Although Himuro occasionally pops out tracks that are more than memorable, a good portion of the album sounds like what you might get if you took 5 or 10 albums from the more IDM-leaning artists on the Warp Records label from the past 5 years and tossed them all in a blender. At nine tracks and just over a half-hour in running length, Mild Fantasy Violence isn't a lengthy release, and in a world jam-packed with melodic instrumental electronic music, it doesn't distinguish itself as much as it could.
Rating: 6
