With its minimal tracks aimed at a light-hearted listening experience, »Liquid Rhythm« docks straight onto the genre of Japanese environmental music. Even the opener Bells could have taken place at the same time as milestones in the genre like Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green. Magic Random Exotism as the second track dabs even more deliberately in the colour palette of Kankyō Ongaku with its reverberating strokes. Mere referencing, however, doesn’t quite do justice to Jason Kolàr’s third album, which, like its predecessor from last year, Loops and Pieces (2017-2020), is released on the Belgian label Dauw. I Have No Idea, for example, despite being introspective, features a lively rhythm guitar that steals the show from the synthetic timbres omnipresent on pretty much every track. The title track, by contrast, allows the playful strokes to overlap, weaving a new-age hammock into which A Soothing Walk, despite its name, forces itself upon the listener even more decisively. Chimes and synths that appear almost arbitrarily at irregular intervals strive to dissolve any puritanical demands placed on structure and rules. Free drifting is the motto that promises the most for Spain based Jason Kolàr. And the album obeys, clearly becoming more experimental in the second half, but not losing sight of the meditative beauty it seeks over the entire distance. By the way, according to the press release, all the sounds come from Kolàr’s machines, except for Joan Serinyà’s double bass on Trigger and Avoiding The Obvious, which bestows an earthly face on the first of the two tracks in particular.
Liquid Rhythm
