yui onodera / Rhizome Gears of Sand Recordings (USA) 2007 CD-R
Recorded & composed in Tokyo, 2006-07.
All sound sources from environmental sound, electronics, voice, guitar
and piano.
■REVIEWS
Back on earth, newcomer Yui Onodera clearly owes some tuition to the Noble
school, and, like other artists on that engaging Japanese label (plus its
spiritual aesthetes residing at 12k, Plop, Apestaartje, Headz), works a
filigree of means into tightly-wound ornaments of sound. Rhizome examines
the residual eddies orbiting about noises glimpsed at nearly subatomic
levels, where the crunch of neutrons becomes palpable, where congregations
of masticating insects assume intensities of biblical proportions. Recalling
Michael Prime’s fascinating anthropomorphic capturings of plant tissue,
Rhizome’s effects (constructed out of hand-picked field recordings, electronic
drizzlings, ultra-processed guitar, and piano will o’ the wisp) echo across
vast microbial regions to reveal the teeming events unfolding deep within.
Hugely engrossing, as it should be.
SIGNAL TO NOISE #49 (USA)
Yui Onodera, Tokyo composer and instrumentalist, creates multi-layered
immersion zones with electro-acoustics and field recordings, combined with
guitar, piano, and treated voice. Rhizome, already release #10, finds Onodera
aligned with the microsound-meets-electronica tradition of fellow-Japanese
Spekk and Plop labels, and the likes of US kindred, Dragon's Eye and Apestaartje.
A rhizome being the epicenter for the plant's roots and stems, it stands
as a fitting semiotic for this work: its 7 parts draw the listener into
its subtle yet sprawling sonic tendrils, a filigree of sonic means spun
into tightly-wound aesthetic ends. As compared with contemporaneous and/OAR
release, Suisei, Rhizome shows a more accessible Onodera - oneiromancer
of captured piano tinkle and guitar pluck, dissolved in light loop liquids
of pitched materials and environment traces. Residual eddies orbit about
particulate fizz, to the crunch of neutrons amplified, resonantly fluting
and fluttering across microbial expanses, unfolding from within. “I collect
the small sounds no one notices”, says Onodera, and engrossing miniatures
like "Rhizome 7" incite to view his collection.
FURTHERNOISE (Review by Alan Lockett)
