Japanese For Beginners - Near the Parenthesis (2011 Honorable Mentions)

Japanese For Beginners

Near the Parenthesis

n5MD Records.

Original SCQ Review.

Japanese For Beginners is seamless almost to a fault. Led via piano but operating on a series of keys, beats and ambient swells, Tim Arndt’s song-cycle flows like a continuous bubbling-up of tear-inducing melodies and intricate drum-loops. The set feels whole in a way that track titles, suggestive though they may be, can’t really slice up. Was that ‘The Rose and Burial’ or ‘The First Surface’ playing? Don't worry, it’s hard to separate.

Now if that sort of homogeny doesn’t sound appealing, you've probably yet to give Japanese For Beginners the benefit of the doubt. Here’s a record that dives straight into the lush details of Four Tet’s Rounds and then stitches a series of emotional sonatas into the flurry. Track titles, suggestive though they may be, can’t function on the level of Arndt’s piano progressions, which build in momentum (‘The Listening Surround’) and fall back into ambient pools (‘Country Of True Wonder’). It’s undoubtedly “one-note” but in a classical sense that expands and contracts contently in the background. Was there room for Near the Parenthesis to add more conflict amid the beautiful elements at play? Of course, but then I might not have listened to it in a state of hypnosis all year.

Japanese For Beginners - Near the Parenthesis

Japanese For Beginners

Near the Parenthesis
n5MD Records.

SCQ Rating: 83%

There’s language to be interpreted on Near the Parenthesis’ new full-length, but it’s neither Japanese nor Tim Arndt’s native tongue of English. After several listens, what initially unfurled as elegant piano progressions, chiming and lamenting over beds of delicate electronics, transforms into Arndt’s ivory-key vocabulary; capable of circling a situation, describing its backdrop, and echoing the listener’s sentiments. Japanese For Beginners’ focus on piano becomes a mere subtext as the flurry of language over these nine compositions amass, with somber and hopeful melodies, into a forty-five minute web of reflective vignettes.

Rarely does a record’s uniformity remain this engaging throughout. With similar gears – piano, a variety of ambient keys and a throbbing patchwork of nestled beats – at work beneath each piece, Near the Parenthesis encourages strong melodic passages to persevere impulsively placed notes which tense and redefine its motivations. Alongside some of his most overtly electronic landscapes to date, Arndt’s pieces never settle, often tying emotional weight into a shuffling, nomadic desire to move forward. With each song modulating another catalyst for the record’s changing emotional state, highlights distinguish themselves regularly: ‘Soft Warmly Straw Raincoat’ delivers an hypnotic back-beat as evocative as the fine imagery of its title, ‘Voice and Radio Bureau’ welcomes some Rounds-era glitchiness, then ‘The Rose and Burial’ steps back into some Arovane-esque electronic solitude.

Okay, those “highlights” listed are actually just the first three tracks, and their effectiveness will largely depend on each listener’s capacity for stylish, unobtrusive electronica. There’s room to argue Japanese For Beginners’ charms as overly pretty, but to dismiss the record on such grounds would be overlooking Arndt’s concentrated ability to score emotional moods with a refined palette. Making the most of monotony, Near the Parenthesis has crafted the first great electronic record of 2011.

Near The Parenthesis - Japanese For Beginners - Soft Warmly Straw Raincoat (n5MD) by pdis_inpartmaint