A car sits on the beach, probably somewhere on the LA coast. It has a brazen metallic look that draws the eye as it boldly stands out from its sandy, beige backdrop.
Shinichi Atobe’s album, Heat, embodies its album cover: each song featuring pronounced metallic drums and warm bass lines that are singed with distortion. An album title like ‘Heat’ could mislead listeners into thinking each song is a sexy summer jam. However, the cover sets the expectation for a more cerebral listening experience, one that will instill a calmness in the listener, and encourage self-reflection.
The day is hot. Someone’s thrown a cloth over the car’s window to keep the interior cool, although a breeze partially blew it off center—leaving its interior exposed to the heat.
Like its cover art, the album invites the listener to sink into its subtle details that may otherwise seem unremarkable. The synthesizers shimmer and ripple like light refracting off hot objects in the sun—it’s likely they were recorded exclusively on analog equipment, then run through a reel-to-reel tape machine during mastering: creating noise to instill slight “imperfections” to each recording. Low end noise prevents each instrument from sounding clinical; subconsciously, despite the repetitiveness of the rhythms and melodies, listeners understand those subtle nuances and are drawn to them.
The sun’s rays are intense, and people hide in the distance under straw umbrellas, perhaps too hot to leave their shelter and swim in the ocean’s tepid water.
The mood is casual on the opening track, So Good, So Right, which features pulsing synths and flickering pianos that build during the song’s progression. Bassier melodies are found on the album’s title tracks, which nicely counterbalance the tinny percussive hits. My favorite track, Heat 1, grooves and sways to a steady four on the floor beat that is accentuated by a knocking metronomic snare drum.
As the album progresses, we move slowly closer to the vehicle, until the heat rising from its exterior becomes too hot to handle.
Each phase of the song’s progression is gradually introduced, which is a trademark of downtempo house and techno: a style of music that invigorates people to move, but not too fast, so they stay lost in their own interpretation of the music. The skittering drums on Heat 2-3 are interjected by rattling chimes, juxtaposed nicely against the burbling subs suspended in the background. The drums match the exterior of the car on the cover: metallic, but no sharp edges, just smooth.
We peer off into the surrounding desert. What is that? Chimes? They rattle and ring off in the distance: almost imperceptible.
Shinichi uses little delay and reverb to fill the area surrounding each sound, leaving space between the instruments in the mix. Instead, there is an unabashed use of hard panning (placing sounds largely to one side of the stereo spectrum). Notably, the track, Bonus, sways back and forth due to the piano and snare placement at opposite sides of the stereo spectrum. The album closes with the second phase of So Good, So Right: a euphoric wash of synthesizers and accentuated piano stabs suspended over a mechanical beat that clicks and ticks into oblivion.
The heat is too much to bear, so we slowly move away from the car as the towel gently flaps in the breeze—closer to falling off the car’s windshield than it was before.
– Evan
Edited by: Seán Pierce