Japanese producer Daisuke Tanabe makes his second appearance since 2009 on Germany's Ki Records with Floating Underwater. While the album is hard to define concretely, Tanabe favours a brightness similar to Teebs, whose hip hop-driven works for Brainfeeder shimmer with rolling metallic accents and generally ear-friendly timbres. As such, Floating Underwater is a playful record, well suited to video game adventures and explorations. Tanabe's sound varies quite extensively on the album from track-to-track, but his sunny palette dominates the album as a whole.
"Fun Robbery" is a great example of Tanabe's production skills and melodic tendencies coming together in perfect balance; his choice of synth patches and tempo are not overwhelming, as some of the other works on the album can at times feel, and as such, the pleasantries of his sonic journey here are enjoyed to their full potential. Tanabe's use of samples also adds to the album's innocent feel. What sounds like pitched-up cuts from children's voices or video game personalities accent the tracks' hip-hop rhythms on-and-off throughout the record.
Floating Underwater is like a sepia-drenched film in which positively absurd events may take place, but the subsequent analysis of these occurrences will always yield intellectually beneficial information.
(Ki)"Fun Robbery" is a great example of Tanabe's production skills and melodic tendencies coming together in perfect balance; his choice of synth patches and tempo are not overwhelming, as some of the other works on the album can at times feel, and as such, the pleasantries of his sonic journey here are enjoyed to their full potential. Tanabe's use of samples also adds to the album's innocent feel. What sounds like pitched-up cuts from children's voices or video game personalities accent the tracks' hip-hop rhythms on-and-off throughout the record.
Floating Underwater is like a sepia-drenched film in which positively absurd events may take place, but the subsequent analysis of these occurrences will always yield intellectually beneficial information.
