Takahide Higuchi is the lord of weirdness.
He's a wizard who cobbles together scraps of dance music's genetic material, a virtual orchestra of arcane synthetic instruments and bizarre samples into a singular array of almost cartoonish compositions that reference footwork's off-kilter rhythms, even if it doesn't much resemble the other material in that particular genre.
With Ez Minzoku, the producer's second release for the freak magnets over at the Orange Milk imprint, the most prominent sounds found are synthetic horns, woodwinds and flutes. "Uoxtu" pairs a lonely faux-trumpet with a drunkenly clumsy rhythmic pattern and a series of disembodied vocal tics. "Nagaremasu" is similar, yet its horn passages are framed by beats that are oddly stable amidst the chaos of dancing laser beams and other obtuse accoutrements.
Where the proceedings really become intriguing, though, is the tumbling sax and percussion workout that is "Dddance," which will have even the most stubborn of tails wagging. There are a few slow jams thrown into the mix, for better or worse, yet even these are littered with Higuchi's signature weirdness. It's as if the producer has built an impossibly ornate and tiny world, with rules that he alone has defined, a space that when taken in from afar appears completely out of place, yet up close feels like home.
(Orange Milk)He's a wizard who cobbles together scraps of dance music's genetic material, a virtual orchestra of arcane synthetic instruments and bizarre samples into a singular array of almost cartoonish compositions that reference footwork's off-kilter rhythms, even if it doesn't much resemble the other material in that particular genre.
With Ez Minzoku, the producer's second release for the freak magnets over at the Orange Milk imprint, the most prominent sounds found are synthetic horns, woodwinds and flutes. "Uoxtu" pairs a lonely faux-trumpet with a drunkenly clumsy rhythmic pattern and a series of disembodied vocal tics. "Nagaremasu" is similar, yet its horn passages are framed by beats that are oddly stable amidst the chaos of dancing laser beams and other obtuse accoutrements.
Where the proceedings really become intriguing, though, is the tumbling sax and percussion workout that is "Dddance," which will have even the most stubborn of tails wagging. There are a few slow jams thrown into the mix, for better or worse, yet even these are littered with Higuchi's signature weirdness. It's as if the producer has built an impossibly ornate and tiny world, with rules that he alone has defined, a space that when taken in from afar appears completely out of place, yet up close feels like home.
