Ishibashi Eiko sucks you into a world of moody sound with ‘For McCoy’
Everybody loves the Japanese movie Drive my Car, it’s even been nominated for an Oscar. Now the musical score for that movie is done by Ishibashi Eiko, a very versatile musician I’ve been a big fan of for quite a while. I absolutely recommend that soundtrack.
Even more exciting is her new album For McCoy, an ode to a character in the TV-series Law & Order, played by actor Sam Waterston. It contains three long tracks which suck you into a dreamy, mysterious world of atmospheric sounds, beginning with something which resembles the intro of Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, but with a flute instead of a trumpet, then proceeds with a saxophone player echoing from the distance. Everything morphs into an amalgam of musical moods, a mixture of cinematic music and ambient, but more David Sylvian than Brian Eno. I am especially reminded of Sylvian’s Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities, a strange mixture of street sounds from far away countries and avant garde music that I owned on cassette as a teenager and which completely hypnotised me when I put it on.
There’s lots more I’m reminded of on For McCoy, Laurie Anderson too, for instance. It’s a beautiful work, enchanting, sometimes haunting, often soothing and, for me, almost therapeutic. I expect lots of wonderful new music, the coming months, but this will surely end op high on my year-end list. (PB)
RSS