I chanced upon a book compiling '90s rave posters from Japan the other day, and it was pretty exciting. The use of color, and often lack thereof; the stylized and expressive characters drawn specifically to divert the eye and cause the brain to sizzle with imagined possibilities; the chaotic, trippy, and almost manic layouts and combinations of fonts and graphics—totally anarchic, fierce, and belligerently charismatic. More punk rock than the punk rock flyers I grew up with, which were mostly photocopy stills from films like
Taxi Driver and
Repo Man with the bands' logos superimposed over the actors' eyes, like we were pretending that Robert De Niro was in witness protection or something. No doubt, if the electronic music scene by me in Anywhere, Wisconsin, had the vibrant energy of these rave flyers while I was in high school, my life would have taken a dramatically different turn (and I'd probably have had to go to rehab for some all-too-abundant party drug too)... maybe it all worked out for the best. My tendency to cultivate a quiet, hermetic life in the sprawl of urbania is a byproduct of having already OD'd on power chords and pogo grooves in wilder years, and this more mature malaise has brought me to the point where I'm able to fully appreciate the densely textural and ruminative ambiance of the kind that producer Hiro Ama is keen on plucking from her daydreams and casting into the wind like a fistful of dandelion pappus. This is, of course, all brought full circle by Ama's latest EP,
Booster Pack, which is unmistakably a trance album, but not of the kind that one might find in any of the erstwhile basements, lofts, or warehouses advertised during the high-water mark of Japan's rave era—it's highly tactile, with the grain of polished leather, a palpable kind of body-music that doesn't attempt to escape the confines of personage or personification, but is localized in the pumping circulation of energy through vessels that connect the body with the soul, and propel it to move on command. It's polished, but not barren of imperfections or the pulse of human warmth. Like her other work, it's not a collection of tracks that takes one out of the moment, but rather permits one to sink ever deeper into it, intensifying a sense of lucidity the longer the listener learns to identify with and interpret the imprint of echoes that it traces on the consciousness. The fact that these tracks are so boldly propulsive when compared to her other pieces grants a certain kinetic liveliness to the reflective reverie of the work, causing a kind of extended anthropomorphism to boil up and swirl around the objects in the vicinity, ceding them a lively and conversative plasticity, and enlisting them as rebounding partners in a volley of charades and assorted gambits of memory. If you find yourself in a full-on argument with a potted plant about the explication of a tarot card you pulled from a deck, or discussing with a nearby interior divider whether its current coat of paint possesses the proper undertone of warmth for the present season, you know you're starting to get somewhere with this record.
