"rain / water" is the fourth album by Tokyo’s Kariu Kenji. Following 2021’s Sekai, which was also released by Bruit Direct Disques, rain / water is a gorgeous haze of song, a modern driftwork that’s creatively rich, and full of fleeting sensation – it’s an album that captures its artist in process, moving through ideas and sounds with a deft hand. It’s also another step in a ‘career’, of sorts, that’s been continually compelling, from the experimental prog touches of Kariu’s group OWKMJ (Orewakonnamonjanai), to his first two solo albums, KK (2009) and KK2 (2011), both released on the Japanese label Manso-Sha, and soundtrack work for Sawada Thunder’s Hikari no Tabi.

These twelve lush pop songs point in multiple directions, outwards to bossa nova, modern R&B and soul, ambient bliss-outs, city pop confections, and electronica. But rain/water also has a sly experimentalism at its core, the kind of experimentation that doesn’t need to call attention to itself, but that exists ‘between the cracks’ of the songs – in small, curious gestures of arrangement, in a sudden twist in melody, or an unexpected detour in a song’s narrative. In this way, they share something of the stylistic free range in other great recent avant-pop moments – think, perhaps, of the music of Maher Shalal Hash Baz; Stereolab’s more late-night, hermetic moments, or High Llamas’ recent Hey Panda.

Like those artists, there’s both intimacy and openness at the core of rain/water. It has a bedroom-studio mood, in that it’s very clearly the conceptual work of one intensely focused mind, but the music isn’t closed off to wider possibilities. You can hear this spirited riskiness in the way Kariu garlands his songs with lovely details – see the sly harmonies and vibrant purr of keyboards in “Flower Name”, for example, elements that benefit from the support of an insistent two-note figure for guitar. “Water” has a sugar-spun fragility in its chord progressions, and guitar playing, that’s pure bossa – you can hear the spirit of Vinicius Cantuaria in the music here, or maybe Arto Lindsay’s run of nineties albums, where he enacted a rapprochement between his No Wave past and the Brazilian tapestry of his early life.

"rain / water" feels borne of a similar impulse, to bring together compellingly divergent aesthetics. The cherry on top, though, is Kariu’s unassuming way with melody, and the sweet cadences of his voice. The lightness of breath in Kariu’s delivery is perfect for the stylishness of these songs; it’s soft but characterful, and the melodies here crumble at the edges of Kariu’s lips. It’s a lovely album – light but never slight; breezy but with a curiousness and wisdom at its core that belies the gentle touch of these twelve delightful songs.
-
Jon Dale