Luminescent Creatures - Ichiko Aoba (2025)

some 2025 releases I hadn’t gotten to yet

My commitment to my blog project has waxed and waned over the last 4 years. Still, one of my growing pet peeves is when I go back to an artist I’ve written up previously and I only bothered to put in 2 sentences that say nothing about how I actually felt listening to it.

So don’t let’s make the same mistake twice.

Aoba tries to represent the natural world as music. While she is Japanese, her music truly sounds global. She uses a pallette of soft edges and muted colors and paints an utterly gorgeous picture with them.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Maybe the reason I didn’t say much about Windswept Adan was that there isn’t much to say. Both records demand your attention and stamp out all my intrusive thoughts.

Tracks I Liked

Tower - some complex orchestration compared to elsewhere

FLAG - a simple melody that hides worlds behind it

SONAR - a meditation