Island no 16 – Memories of Future Landscapes

This deeply enchanting record was borne out of an intimate liaison with SABIWA's memories of childhood in the embattled East Asian peninsula post-Japanese occupation. The Berlin-based, Kaohsiung-born composer employs her voice, traditional melodies and found sounds – often obscured beyond recognition – to make tantalising soundscapes.

Opener ‘Pupa’, begins calmly with a drone, that is soon taken to new heights through iridescent sheets of percussion that glisten, manoeuvre and bewitch. ‘Dog Smells Your Future’ is a brooding meditation, folding melodies from the Thau Tribe with metallophone strikes, haunting vocals and bird song. The intricate processing of voice opens textural possibilities, while contorting short semantic bursts into angular interventions amidst a rapidly moving bed of plucks, clicks and scrapes.

While aspects of the record are intent on evoking an unnerving synthetic soundworld, perhaps with the intent to escape and move past the trappings of the human condition and generational trauma, its closer ‘Hermaphrodite’ brings it all flooding back, with excerpts of SABIWA's uncle singing Taiwanese folk songs of independence that were once forbidden, interspersed with glitch-heavy electronic interventions. This deliberated clash of old, new, past and future is a stunning feat, that welcomes new revelations with each listen.