First impressions: Tokyo Black Star ‘Black Ships’

First impressions: Tokyo Black Star ‘Black Ships’

27 January, 2009 | 3.08AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: innervisions, tokyo black star

With one foot in Tokyo and the other in New York, and a debut album ‘Black Ships’ set for release at the end of March on Berlin’s Innervisions, the work of Isao Kumano and Alex Prat aka Tokyo Black Star represents the collaborative modern world of electronic music.

Beatportal had a sneaky first listen of ‘Black Ships’ today, and the overall feeling of the album is one of connectivity, or rather the search for perpetual connectivity. Having seen the world getting smaller, Tokyo Black Star’s music and imagination seems to extend beyond the rim, into the universe.

Like all good electronic music LPs, ‘Black Ship’ glides across an ocean affected by many different musical undercurrents.

From spacey disco, to funk-influenced rhythms and jazz, house beats and deep house grooves, ‘Black Ship’ is transitional in nature and translucent in body.

Beginning with the arpeggiated melancholic synths of ‘Powder Dreams’, the mood is small and understated, like a flower slowly opening as the day dawns.

Moving through the deep techno of ‘Caballero’, it isn’t long before the mood takes a turn towards the space disco end of things with ‘Still Sequence’, ‘Reincarnation’ and ‘Game Over’ keeping the LP funky.

The album’s only vocal cut is a beautiful deep house groove that sees a contribution from the poet Rich Medina, who’s subsonic voice echoes Tokyo’s seduction with “Not quite sure where I last lost my innocence/ maybe I lost it on the road to manhood/ why is it so hard to exercise due diligence/ why does being bad feel so good?”

The journey, in ‘Black Ships’ case, is well worth taking.

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