Aiko Takahashi - The Grass Harp (Laaps)

The Slow Music Movement
Jun 29
2 min read

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's June 27th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

This is the cover art for Aiko Takahashi's, The Grass Harp LP on Laaps Records, showing abstract geometric artwork with blocks of black, teal, cream, and wood grain textures. Text reads "AIKO TAKAHASHI THE GRASS HARP," "laaps."

I haven’t stumbled across many great start to finish ambient albums of late that appeal to my generally more minimal, electrocoustic preferences. I don’t know if it’s just me but there seems to be a tendency to more full bodied and denser ambient music, whether it’s a cyclical trend or the ambient community unconsciously becoming more agitated and trying to wordlessly say something I’m not sure? Certainly I’m seeing more releases pitched as music that promotes healing and sleep, but which I find anything but restful and soothing, prerequisites for my personal sound baths.

Aiko Takahashi, and particularly Laaps are no strangers in this house, and after last year’s It Could Have Been A Beautiful collaboration on sister (audio+ lavish book) imprint IIKI, it’s nice to hear them teaming up again for another peaceful transmission, this time consisting of shorter tracks.

Information about Takahashi is scarce, but she now lives a split existence between the Slovenian and Italian cities of Nova Gorica and Gorizia. It’s also a handy metaphor for her music which sits on the frontiers of silence and sound; form and abstraction - exactly the sort of stylistically ambiguous music that I’m so drawn to, and so often struggle to adequately describe.

I’m guessing her new home is a verdant, beautiful place as the sounds of its waterways, weather and fauna are in abundance, a natural foil to the minimal instrumentation and processed sounds that are artfully collaged into detailed soundscapes that occasionally tell tales of personal experience, as with the somewhat wistful piano led “Poissons Rouges“, but mostly just are; content to exist, happy in their ephemeral nature but also gently contemplation encouraging when called upon.

It’s a wonderful, start to finish listen and another in a long line of stellar releases from the artist and label, both of whom deserve your attention.