Rain drums a steady rhythm on the sidewalk outside the window, which I cracked open this a.m. Birds somewhere—in the bushes? in the trees?—chirp and sing, no doubt annoyed that they can’t fly free. Every so often, the muffled sounds of cars, SUVs and delivery trucks echo from the great beyond. The world’s turned weird out there.
The world’s turned weird in here, too. On Friday, as those who follow me on Instagram already know, we adopted siblings Maisie and Mo, two 12-week-old kittens who’ve lived in my home office—aka the guest bedroom—since. (Experts say it’s best to slowly introduce cats, no matter their age, to new digs.) They race and chase each other, play tag, roughhouse a helluva lot, chow down—and sack out. We’ve spent much of our time forging a connection with them.
As a result, until this morning, I had little time for active music listening. (For those unfamiliar with the term, it means focusing on the sound waves rolling from the speakers—easy to do when you’re lying on a bed with two tiny cats asleep on your chest, as was the case this morning.) Yosi Horikawa’s Impulse, released on Friday, is a compelling collection of synth-driven ambient compositions, the kind of thing that commands attention. The tracks lap and crash to shore, push inland and recede to sea. It’s intense and immense one moment, brisk and frisky the next. Anyone who enjoys such esoteric albums as Jean-Michel Jarre’s Zoolook will find much here to like.
The recording makes use of Dolby Atmos, aka spatial audio, though it plays just as well via old-fashioned stereo, too. Water, waves, birds, chants and various found sounds accent the 11 tracks, all of which feature heady rhythms, while the synth-driven accoutrements sport a McCartney-like flair. The press release quotes Horikawa, who was trained in architecture and architectural acoustics, as saying, “Looking back, one big influence on the album was the loss of my good friend. I now feel that the enormous difference between life and death is what creates the various contrasts in my album. I think I was unconsciously searching for a strong, lively sound, and at the same time I was trying to find a sound coming from afar.”
The Old Grey Cat 