NR / MA – shinkai
the sorry best of CEPREN SYNTH
4 Novembre 2021
Lina Filipovich
8 Novembre 2021"An unthawing aquarium. An unanswering aquarium. "
Five years after the release of ‘Pressure Loss’ the modern master of electronic minimalism Nicola Ratti returns to WHERE TO NOW ?
The Italian architect and producer collaborates with Japanese MC ‘MA’, for a suite of submerged, outsider Trip-Hop. MA has been a part of the Tokyo Hip-Hop underground for many years, over which time he has stylistically leapt into noisier, more experimental territories.
The pair had met a couple of times in Japan first and then in Europe, undertaking a live collaborative experiment combining sounds and words that had not been designed to be performed together.
‘Shinkai’ heralds the first time Nicola Ratti has worked with a vocalist, and MA’s unique brand of ritualistic vocal methods and experimental approaches to intonation and inflexion only enhances Ratti’s otherworldly soundscapes. The depth of meaning behind MA’s lyrics further expands this sprawling sound world, revealing a twisted beauty, a deep insight into the melancholic world MA reflects upon within his abstract wordplay – on ‘Suiso’ MA laments above Ratti’s mourning electronics….
Ratti assigns the following poetic grounding to the intentions and thematic form of the album :
“Shinkai means deep sea, a place most of us will never see except on the surface. The sea depths do not belong to us, they are not places for us, we do not know them and they disturb us, they are a material that we can look at without seeing. I have always thought that height, verticality in general, was not a familiar dimension except in relation to our physicality. The horizon reassures us, the depth disturbs us. The Italian language is written and read horizontally, from left to right, the Japanese language can be written vertically and read from right to left. Does the horizon still reassure us?”
