There’s a core cast of components in the sonic palette that repeatedly crop up: the swinging jazz drums of Valentina Magaletti (certainly the MVP of Ookii Gekkou) tactile analogue synthesizers Susumu Mukai’s muted, fathoms-deep Jah Wobble-esque bass and the use of woodwind instruments, such as oboe and clarinet. On the last album, 2019’s Age of Immunology, there’s a sense of comfort with the metronomic rhythms and tranquil instrumentation, whereas Ookii Gekkou is more twisted, finding Cathy Lucas et al in boundless, sprawling form. In the past, Vanishing Twin have occasionally sounded like they never got over that first hearing of the Wicker Man soundtrack and the albums of Broadcast (though Phil MFU was literally in Broadcast for a spell). Listening to the record can feel like travelling along a portal to another world, like the topsy-turvy desertscape Homer finds himself in when he eats that spicy chilli in The Simpsons (I’m struck repeatedly by the similarities between that scene’s soundtrack and Ookii Gekkou). A ceremony, like this album, moves from the insular to the expansive. The chants of “ookii gekkou” in ‘Big Moonlight’ have a religious tenor to them. The idea of ceremony is key to the sound of this record. Vanishing Twin use these moments so evocatively that they’re almost filmic: the chanted vocal choruses in ‘Big Moonlight’, ‘In Cucina’, and ‘Wider Than Itself’ are reminiscent of stumbling on a ceremony to some vengeful Pagan god in the woods. These instances where a certain element is introduced which completely re-defines the song are peppered over the album. The eerie glockenspiel ostinato on ‘Big Moonlight’ seems to herald the opening of a portal to another world. For instance, in ‘The Organism’ the exotica-tinged arrangement with its fluttering eddies of xylophone is tempered by the domestic, intimate sample of a cat purring. This quotation seems fitting when applied to Ookii Gekkou, the London quartet’s new album, as it seems to exist in perpetual motion, forever wobbling between opposites. In an interview with The Quietus in 2018, Vanishing Twin’s Phil MFU said that “Jazz is all about the relationship of sounds moving in space”.
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