The Japanese ambient artist’s new album is an immersive textural exercise that demands full use of the senses. It is some of his most magnetic work yet.
Daisuke Fujita is a channeler of the unseen. As Meitei, the Hiroshima-based producer has cultivated a whisper-soft style of ambient music, distilling what he describes as “the lost Japanese mood” into loops suffused with all the melancholy and mystery of an old ghost story. Though his main project has revolved specifically around the goal of interpreting Japanese history and culture through sound, with Tenka, Fujita has put aside any particular thematic focus. If Meitei has been fixated specifically on Japan, Tenka widens Fujita’s canvas, evoking a more universal kind of spirit.
Hydration is an exercise in texture, one that captures, as Fujita puts it, “a more everyday part of myself.” Even for a project supposedly designed with no particular concept in mind, Fujita can’t help but fully engage with this idea of music as a sensory experience (the physical edition of the album even comes with a fragrance specifically designed to accompany the record). Appropriately, Hydration moves like dew evaporating into the air: Fujita’s light, trickling sound design never offers anything like a melody, or even clearly defined chords for that matter, instead constantly hovering on the edge of becoming. It’s a delicate balance that Fujita pulls off with grace, making Hydration some of the producer’s most entrancing, elemental work yet.
Where Fujita’s previous albums typically condensed his ideas into short musical poems, Hydration’s extended track lengths allow the listener to sink more fully into its steamy depths. The album resembles an ecosystem abuzz with microscopic life, in part because it was inspired by the walks Fujita would take in the mountain forests near his home. Sounds seem to seep into each other, like the rainstick effect that courses through “Antioxidant Shower ~ Permanent Natural Circulations Seem to Be Beautiful ~,” before reappearing again in a new form on “The Ocean That You Observe in My Aquarium ~ The Eternity I See in Your Eyes ~.” Fujita’s ear-tickling timbres are serene; hear the way his crisp, icy synthesizers caress the chimes of “Diverse Aesthetics ~ Our Hydration Is a Symbol ~,” phasing in and out of the track like a cold, pulsing vein. It may seem stationary at first, but it possesses a level of subtly shifting detail, lifted straight from the book of ambient glitch practitioners like Oval and Vladislav Delay. Every tiny, granular tone comes together to form an incandescent whole.
Because Hydration is so focused on the small intricacies of particular sound patterns, any one wrong move can derail a whole track. The main misfire is “How to Spend an Aromatic Night ~ 23PM-1AM ~,” which resembles the buzz of a sea of cicadas, but unfortunately ends up becoming more grating than soothing. Aside from that moment, Hydration is as peaceful as a misty morning, the kind where every small refraction of light off the trees feels magical. In Japan, there’s a traditional incense ceremony known as Kōdō, where rather than “smelling” fragrances, participants are instructed to “listen” to the scent. With Hydration, it feels as if Fujita is asking us to treat his music in the same manner—not as something to be enjoyed via only one sense, but as an experience meant to emanate throughout our entire bodies. Understood this way, it is nothing short of nourishing.
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