Customer Reviews

Flower With No Color

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"Flower With No Color" reminds me of a poem by Araki Yasusada:

A mud snail crawls-
in the world, sorrow and unhappiness
undulate, undulate

Like the poem, this collaboration between Yoshimi P-we of the Boredoms and Yuka Honda of Cibbo Matto is kind of pretty, kind of somber, but kind of meaningless. The songs are sparce conglomerations of faint melodies, backed by windchimes, barking dogs, computer blips and xylophone (among other sounds). Jazz and traditional Japanese music are obvious influences, but overall, the scattered ideas expressed by the songs on "Flower With No Color" are more exotic and experimental than anything else.

I've always enjoyed Cibbo Matto, Smokey and Miho, and at least appreciated the Boredoms. The prospect of a collaboraiton between Yuka and Yoshima excited me, because I thought it might bring Cibbo Matto's dancehall fun together with the Boredoms' heavy ambience. Instead, I find this album adrift in a sea of artisitic indulgence.

However, it is pretty, soothing and well-crafted. The trumpet on "Spy Said One" is lovely, and piano riffs on "UMEgination" and "Mow Deck In Eye" give hints of the amazing musical talent these two bring to the table. The album reminds me of some of the better Martin Denny albums, which is to say experimental lounge music. Delightful, really, but probably not what anyone buying this album would have expected.

Now you know...

I was living in a community called Arcosanti, way out in the high Arizona desert when I heard this. After a crazy week I had asked a friend of mine with a great music collection to lend me some of the most relaxing, mellow music he had around, and this is one of the albums. I was living in a small, isolated cement cube on the edge of a deep, sandy dried up river bank. Large cottonwood trees grew along the shore and shaded my place, and a mesquite forest grew up on the other side of the bank, where cows would roam through. Chickens and peacocks ran around. I lay down in the shade and listened to this, and I more than chilled out... more than de-stressed. My heart opened up, I saw clearly again how beautiful my surroundings were. You know how in meditation, you're supposed to find that fine point between laxity and excitement? "Flower with no color" gave that to me. I lay there, completely awake, completely calm. And its no wonder... this album is very playful, and very elegant. No masturbatory experimentalism, no "take me seriously" wackiness. This is fun, and it feels incredibly natural. If I made some music, I mould hope to make it in this vein.

And it's not just me. I played this in the bronze foundry, where we "toiled" all day long sculpting gorgeous bronze bells. The foundry overlooks a series of mesas and fields. And I'm telling you, I put this on one afternoon when the more tiresome work was done, and everyone was just like, "What IS this? This is incredible!" It was good spirit food for everybody... and just to drive it home, I was doing a pretty wacky DJ set by my cement cube one day, playing everything from Merzbow to happy hardcore tracks (preferably together,) James Chance to Tibetan Buddhist chants, and I really noticed, out of all the dozens of artists I played, that people were in love with this. I put it on later at night during a going away party, and the love and discussions flew. In fact, my friend who had lent it to me slipped away with it just afterwards.

I'm sure the environment I was in, and the place I was at personally, leant a lot to the experience, and maybe the other reviewers didn't dig it so well because they were in to much of a "my living room" environment. But that's good! The fact that this music expresses where I was at during that wonderful time says it all. Take it on the road, take it through the desert and up into the mountains. And yes, I've enjoyed it many times since I moved to San Francisco, just sitting in my living room. PS: Mileece's "Formations" album did quite a lot to me out there too... peace.

Fans of Yoshimi's OOIOO should have no trouble liking this,it's even more ambient and sparse than said group.You really get the feeling they are inspired by their trip up the mountain,just sitting around soaking in everything and playing what comes to mind.Neo-tribal drums,synth squiggles,beautiful piano melodies,occasional chanting/wordless vocalizing,snippets of passerbys,dogs,plenty of birds,even the hum of the truck they are riding in swirl in,out and around the listener.The overall vibe I get from this is "playful",it's not earth shattering,it's not so bland as to be disposable.Just playful soundscapes.

First of all, this is not ambient music. It's not even music. Sounds from xylophone and percussion, along with sampling of sounds (bird noise, waves, other stuff) are combined arythmically and experimentally to create...well, nothing much. I can't imagine why you would prefer to turn this on. It provides a limited amount of atmosphere, but no real mood. It grabs your attention occasionally with a mix-up of sounds, but then doesn't reward you should you concentrate on it. Avoid this one, unless the above description is your bag.

For a long time, I had been hoping for a Boredoms side project that would really satisfy me. Ooioo wasn't it, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots certainly wasn't it, the projects of the other members didn't impress me either. Actually, the Boredoms themselves don't impress me that much, so much as the idea of the band impresses me. Their cover art impresses me. Not too slag on them, they're neat just not you know, excellent. But anyway, this album is pretty impressive. Sort of a combination of Jap-noise and pretty Chinese restaurant music. Recorded on a mountain top apparently. Very pretty, a little goofy. Highly recommended.

For those of you who enjoyed Yokota's The Boy and the Tree, or any of the later catalogue of Nobekazu Takemura, this album will certainly appeal to you. C'est tout.

Flower With No Color, a collaboration between Yoshimi P-we from the Boredoms and Yuka Honda from Cibo Matto, represents a triumph of concept over content. In theory the idea of two musicians packing a bunch of gear and some wine into a truck and recording songs as they drive up a mountain holds a lot of promise. In practice, however, the project is little more than an exercise in self-indulgence.

The songs often meander too much like the streams that the pair probably encountered on their way up Mt. Ikoma. There are neat effects here and there (the singing on "Ha Wa ii Na"; treated gongs on "UMEgination"; the twittering birds throughout), but Yoshimi's and Yuka's journey turned out to be more interesting than their musical destination.

They use bells, cymbals, xylophones, pianos, samples, vocals, wood blocks, guitars, drums, trumpets and nature sounds to create a mix of free jazz, electronica, New Age, and traditional Japanese music. But they don't dig into any of these musical styles enough. "SPY said ONE" holds the most promise, starting off with some cool, jazzy interplay of guitar, bass, trumpet and samples. But the song drags on for nearly 10 minutes, devolving into noodling, dogs barking and silly vocal manipulations. The New Age material is disjointed and would never provide the relaxation that so much music in that genre offers.

Listening to this album, I thought back to a two-man project called Bus Full of Witches that I did as a joke nearly 20 years ago (boombox recording with guitars, basses, drums, basketballs, power drills, hammers, etc.). Flower With No Color is better than that effort, but was created out of the same need to satisfy an experimental jones without concern for the experience it would give listeners.

Dave Brigham
Junkmedia.org Review