If all you know about the Japanese musician Shoko Igarashi is that she is a saxophonist and studied at the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, the information you have is sorely lacking. Or you have to have some imagination to envisage what she does on her debut album. For a start, she plays very little of her learned instrument. Instead, »Simple Sentences« is packed with synthesisers. Even if it may be a bit predictable now: she likes to use them in a way similar to the electropop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra, to be heard right away in the first track »Sand Dungeon«. Her melodies often have these »Asian«-sounding snaking meanders, along with synthetic brass, bells and all kinds of electronic sounds that can’t be pinpointed. Even more than her historical models, funk is Shoko Igarashi’s ally, hinting at her jazz education. More than anything else, however, she draws together a large chunk of electronic music history without sounding like one genre exercise after the next. She prefers to amalgamate her influences, even letting herself be carried away by exotica-cheesiness. You let her get away with everything. You even love her for it. And then you go back to »Sand Dungeon« and ask yourself who this French woman’s voice is that talks about music. The hunch is confirmed at the end: it is the French drone doyen Éliane Radigue who raves about the richness that comes from self-restrictions. Limitations do not exist in Shoko Igarashi’s work. This makes the homage to such a completely different artist all the more sovereign: a bow and an appropriation at the same time.
François J. Bonnet/ Sarah Davachi
Banshee / Basse Brevis
Portraits GRM