In advance of Origamibiro‘s latest album, Denovali has released Shakkei, Shakkei Remixed and Cracked Mirrors and Stopped Clocks as a lovely three-disc box set. We celebrate by republishing the original Shakkei review, representing the band’s best work to date.
Everything is musical. The claim has been made by many avant-garde musicians, who tend to hear sounds as notes: a footfall, an engine, a screech. Yet not everything sounds like a song; one would be hard-pressed to find melody in the unadorned tones of a traffic jam or a children’s birthday party. Instead, one might discern hints or snatches: raw material, something to work with. This is the spirit in which Origamibiro approaches its art.
Once upon a time, Origamibiro was just Tom Hill. 2007’s Cracked Mirrors and Stopped Clocks was a fine debut for the project, albeit a bit one-dimensional. The addition of multi-instrumentalist Andy Tyherleigh and visual artist Jim “The Joy of Box” Boxall has changed all that. What was once pretty yet predictable is now gorgeous and surprising; a singular vision has now become a group achievement.
Origamibiro’s name implies the art of paper folding, yet in this case, it’s the art of sound folding: making shape from sheets of sound. Shakkei is the incidental landscape, the background that becomes the foreground through attention and integration. In this instance, traditionally overlooked noises – rain, a high-pitched squeal, the approach of a subway car – are afforded equal billing with musical instruments: bell, keyboard, double bass. Such combinations are in turn augmented by the use of everyday percussive tones, as seen in the video for “Quad Time” (included in the purchase): ripped paper and typewriter keys, recorded and looped until they blend into the musical scenery.
Part of the allure is the challenge of identifying sound sources. Is that a football crowd? A racquetball? A gramophone? Once the camera leaves the hand and the sound is sucked into the machine, identification becomes even harder. The primary beauty of Shakkei is the blur between the live and the looped, the processed and the organic, the natural and the re-enacted. In many instances, sound sources are cleanly erased from the down beats and reappear on the up beats (a once-laborious process on reel-to-reel, now facilitated by computers). In others, they flex and bend. Yet through it all, the album retains an undeniable warmth. Piano hammers are miked, strings wander from speaker to speaker, and Tyherleigh’s double bass provides ample grounding.
Shakkei may be in love with sound, but it’s also a compositional triumph. Every splash, step, breath and tweet is mixed into its complex score. Babbling brook bows to crackling fire. Violin curtsies to brush. Songs develop, crest and recede. The timbral variety surpasses that of an average recording: the percussive effects are more varied than those found in most electronic music, while the sound palette is wider than that of an orchestra. Most tellingly, the tracks are accessible despite their extreme experimentalism, resulting in an overall classification midway between post-rock and modern chamber music.
After listening to (and watching parts of) Shakkei, a new sonic world is opened to the listener. Sounds that once lacked meaning now brim with potential. The listener realizes that every sound, in the right hands, can become a percussive musical element: a sigh, a turned page, a shower door. This shift in perception can become a great antidote to boredom, as the banality of supermarket lines and delayed trains is replaced by the observation of one’s sonic climate. While most recordings draw us in, Shakkei invites us out: out of the home, out of the car, out of the iPod to a greater engagement with the constantly unfolding uncomposed music around us. (Richard Allen)
a closer listen 