I appreciate the logic of a thematic album set on an island having an expansive and spacious sound. Windswept Adan, the seventh album by Japan's Ichiko Aoba doesn't concern itself with the limits of geography or boundaries defined by the roil and temper of the ocean. Instead, Ichiko creates reservoirs that flow inward, soaking in the influence of her surroundings, creating a passage into the vast tidepool of the imaginary. In this manner, she manifests within the scope of the project an ever-growing sense of outward spiritual awareness- like a thundercloud swelling with accumulated rain, or a tree that has been growing on a hill for a thousand years- every strain of its evident advance makes way for a more complex and potent affinity between life and the conditions on which it depends. Ichiko was respected as a solo guitar player and singer prior to this release, but her efforts in collaboration with producer Taro Umebayashi have cultivated an abidingly lush and narrative form of chamber pop on Windswept Adan, one that presents a hushed momentum in awe of the triumph of time and the cycles that define it. It speaks, in deliberate, quiet dialog with unseen, edifyingly persuasive forces. Its voice is indistinguishable from the softest breeze, but its power will retrieve what is lost from this world as the sea laid claimed to Thonis many millennia ago.
