"'Chiky(u)u' presents the Japanese approach to recording naturally occurring sound. Ten new sound artists, including Akifumi Nakajima's Aube project and a whole host of previously unheard circuit burners, are set loose on a series of contorted field recordings 'gathered from the earth (stones, water, etc) or ctivity resulting from movement in the earth (earthquakes, etc)'. As far as CDs go its pretty 'interactive' with lots of secret tracks (97, to be precise!) and blank gaps. Rewinding from track one triggers 'Quake', a stereo shakedown high on the Richter scale, like a CD with teeth, gnawing away at your sense. Felow entrants in the howl stakes include Hatohan, whose 'Eldorado' is the sound of hurricane winds being sucked through tunnels, with phantom train carriages sparking on the rails dissolving into Buddhist bells and flowing water. Possibly the most unsettling of all is 'crackstratum' using only the 'the sound of the Ground Stones', holy stones that seem to speak (the 'everything is vibration' school of thought). The stones drone darkly, like drunken didgeridoos beneath a patiently dripping tap, until Nakajima starts skelping them with a large stick while his belly rumbles. They soon shut up. Another stand out (and every one's a boggler) is Tamaru's 'Water Margin', generated by 'attaching electrodes to the bank of the Arakawa River'. It's a hymnal of silent hum with occasional deep Morse Code blips bubbling to the surface while downstream a music box spins. 'Listen, the snow is falling,' Yoko Ono once sang. We should have done at the time, but collected here are many invigorating attempts to do just that. Listen, the planet is humming." (Review by David Keenan for The Wire magazine.)
1. Hatohan - Eldorado
2. Utah Kawasaki - Low Capacitance
3. MSBR - The Hollow Sea
4. Aube - Crackstratum
5. Koji Marutani - Scenes 4
6. MSBR - The Hollow Ground
7. Akira Yamamichi - Topography I To V
8. Toru Yamanaka - Weathering 2
9. Tamaru - Water Margin
10. Tak++ - Listening Point 20
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