This blog wouldn't be worth much if I couldn't turn you on to a band like Arrrepentimiento every once in a while. The Tokyo ensemble specializes in audio collages that superimpose pop-folk melodicism and a delicate, contingent sense of rhythm onto field recordings and other miscellaneous audial sensations. Their fusion of the errant and purposeful emerges as an anarchic take on Fleet Foxes or Iron & Wine, or other such chambré, low-key rockers of the '10s- only much more interestingly. With singles like "Rewind the Sun" and smaller releases like Syllabus #1 & #2, they've managed to make this somewhat incongruous experiment of theirs more cohesive, aligning the various and straining nonlinear strands that make up each movement knit together enough to become a commanding symphony of formal defection. Still, improved command over their style doesn't cast a dim light on their earlier efforts. In retrospect, I've developed a fondness for 2020's Birth of Significance. It's their longest release that isn't a live album, and it quietly boasts many of their most solid and cogent grooves, while demonstrating the fundamental soundness of their harmonic potential. The immersive pump and push of "One Day of the Optimist" stands out in this regard, feeling pungently bassy without being overly intrusive, while earlier tracks like "Resonance" find a contend medium between a post-rock jangle and a lush baroque heave amongst a hornet's swarm of construction noise. The record is a bit of a turning point for the group, demonstrating a peak in their traditional songwriting sensibilities and proving the effectiveness of their designs, resulting in the moments where the quietly troubling bawl of ambulance sirens that roar through "Sequence is Ready" and the curious chatter of caged birds and scratchy radio interludes that interject into the gentle dance of a track like "Pollen" all the more intriguing for the verisimilitude they cause to drain into the otherwise dreamy flow of these songs. The conflicts posed by the non-musical elements resolve mostly as added texture, but also play an important role in prompting inquiry into the settings in which these songs were made and the lives of those who made them. It reminds me that these songs are not just diversions offered for momentary pleasure and consumption but the product of human intention as a crystallization of some thought or feeling that called out from within their maker to be given a voice. That voice and its message find us, despite the interference of an unpredictable and disorganized world- and yet, it is that disorder that perhaps uncovers the value and meaning imbued within these sounds. Birth of Significance locates its cause and origin in that discordant state in which the spark of purpose is immaculately conceived and flourishes like a wildfire.
