Please note this is an old page and Fly Global Music has now moved. Please follow this link and search for the entry in the new site.

There is a smooth texture to the mamba beats and tiny keyboards and scrapes and rubs of the Guaro Board. There is an indisputable kindness and heart to the pieces Miho has constructed, but from a lo-fi approach that avoids drum kits and lead instruments and opts to use a range of percussion and a family of different textures and tools. There is so much to take in, but somehow it all remains on a level of simplicity… Like anything that is natural and organic, it grows and has heart and is something so easy to appreciate and yet so very hard to dissect and explain.

A dangerous concoction of sounds that blend and dance and play like sprites with tiny daggers…

‘Spirit of Juliet’ is an important example, where sampled military drumming and a nice enough trumpet solo leads into the path of a tiny electronic organ with psychotic daydreams and a wonky key or three. Miho stumbles into this circus nightmare and builds a melody where others would fear to tread. How does she find the room to sing a luxurious and almost normal melody in amongst this psyched-out, vibe madness? Who knows? But within the slow learner piece, she finds an alcove of beauty and turns the strangeness into something beautiful.

Then, just when you are going to have a lie down and find a hole into the world you once knew (that did not consist of bees with balloon heads and snakes with velvet tongues and hind legs of fire), ‘Walking City’ comes loping in with its broken machines, falling sparks and shuffling tribal beats. The narrative from the talented artist pads around the verses (‘My Dad is an inspector of messages from insects’) and then branches out into a fairly memorable chorus, accompanied with shingling metals, jazzy Tropicana rhythms and single noted pianos. Give it some time to wrap itself around you and you will be lost.

And there are over mamba mofos, such as ‘Amazona’, where a sort of jazzy Björk creation prowls and stalks its way over to the bed and puts on a short (1:58) show just for you, swinging from vines and curling out of clothes.

In fact, if you wanted a single type of imagery in which to describe the eerie beauty of Ecdysis, then you wouldn’t go wrong to think of a deadly and exotic lotus or poisonous tropical flower, covered in blood red sunsets and crowned with long and spindly feelers that dance and reach out to you, part human and all sexy. It’s extravagant, it’s wrong, it’s a beauty that quivers and begs to be touched, tasted and devoured, but its pretty outset and delicate layers barely conceals a dominant and heady narcotic that will take you under if you wander too close. The vibe of Ecdysis is so ‘out there’, so tripped and visual that you may find your head spinning at points. You certainly have to be in the right disposition — i.e. be ready to lose yourself in tribal dances, sways and meditative-like appreciation to this elemental celebration.

This is the most intriguing listen of the year, if nothing else. There are squares, circles, fire and a green mist and nothing will make sense. You will want to grab at it, caress it and understand it, but it will lure you down and down into a wonderful audio comatose before you can resist and realise you’re thinking.