Nagoya’s leftfield electronic scene has recently garnered interest from the international music press. This is chiefly thanks to the efforts of producer and all-around scenester Yuya Abe (abentis). abentis has been an associate of Facta & K-LONE’s Wisdom Teeth label since 2021. After a chance encounter with Facta on the platform formerly known as Twitter, Wisdom Teeth featured abentis’ track “Bicycle” in their 2022 compilation To Illustrate. Earlier this year, abentis curated a compilation of Nagoya talent for Wisdom Teeth titled nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 (quiet wind). Entries oscillate from woodblock percussion-fronted minimal house to rootsical UK bass. Now the artist returns with his debut album Dim Grow, the first physical release on his fledgling 2++ label, which he plans to use to promote the Nagoya scene. Dim Grow is fairly short, clocking in at just 41 minutes, but contains enough unique ideas to fill a longer work.
“Separate” opens the album with an unhurried cavalcade of brassy splashes and arpeggiation evoking Italian experimentalist Caterina Barbieri. It segues into “In Memories,” the longest piece on Dim Grow at just over nine minutes. It’s maybe too long; physically modeled kalimba dominates the first 90 seconds until the rising tedium is suddenly leavened with bass. A Steve Reich influence looms large for the remaining seven-plus minutes, a twinkling tropical variation on the American minimalist composer’s studied drift between melodic and rhythmic phrases. Especially compelling are the reverberant marimba stabs near the end with a series of showy decay accents—essentially the audio equivalent of crisp serifs.
“Far Enough” and “Lune,” channel some of abentis’ Japanese influences, particularly goopy analog synth leads reminiscent of Thousand Knives-era Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono’s late 70s prog-psych experiments—albums like Cochin Moon and Paraiso that détourned western exotica-kitsch. “Far Enough” is particularly mischievous; one motif is teasing a trap-style snare line only to collapse it into a wash of static.
Forays into dance music shade the second half of Dim Grow. The swung 4/4 of “Lune” could earn it a place in a more open-minded house or techno set. “Eachpath” susurrates with the restlessness of 2010s deconstructed club artists like Jam City and Lee Gamble, but grounded in the rhythmic and harmonic grooves of 90s intelligent techno acts like B12, Ken Ishii, and LA Synthesis. “Circulation” is the shortest track on the album and may also be the most dance-oriented: bedroom techno with dubby mallet percussion running in opposite directions over male voices that lie on the threshold of discernibility.
It’s easy to envision this music issuing from the soundsystem of a chic Nagoya(ka) sake bar, and if abentis gets his way, audiophile venues the world over. (Marcello Ursic)
a closer listen 