NOAH
Shares new single ‘メルティン・ブルー (Melting Blue)’
New album ‘Thirty’ due 18th October via FLAU
Noah’s smoke-hazed voice weaves like a phantom through her music, always varied: a product of her environment and all the years leading up to its moment of creation. Whether it’s delicate childlike piano, an R&B feel with looping beats, or the lo-fi nostalgic of vaporwave, her tracks resound with energy and beauty.
Arriving after 2015’s album Sivutie (influenced by growing up in Hokkaido), her latest record Thirty, due 18th October via esteemed label FLAU,takes inspiration from the past three years of living in Tokyo. A synth-streaked, lo-fi love letter to the mega-city, told with all the glitz, energy, messy chaos and nostalgia that the Japanese capital conjures.
Today she shares new track ‘メルティン・ブルー’ (trans. ‘Melting Blue’). Soaked with nostalgia and gleaming with glamour, it’s a tale of minimalism and Chinese-leaning tastes. Sounding like something from the world of Cantonese pop in the 1980s (and named after a barber shop in her local area) Noah’s stark, delicious chords make the empty space seem to glitter as you wait for the next sound. Her voice – lilting, layered, far-off – is transcendent in its languid tones.
About Thirty:
Tokyo is big. Tokyo is messy. Tokyo is futuristic. Tokyo is everything all at once. It’s this image of Japan’s capital that Noah draws inspiration from for her latest album, Thirty.
From the sweeping, mystical feel of the intro – like a portal into the world of the city – to tracks like ‘Melting Blue’ that clank deliciously with ‘80s Hong Kong pop minimalism, Noah’s tracks also feature a mellow Chinese taste.
Following a trip to Chinatown in Yokohama, Tokyo’s next-door neighbour, she noticed the bustling feel of the place, its life and its noise, and for her it became a microcosm of Tokyo: an associated image. Thirty is named for the age around which Noah was making these tracks and is a culmination of three years living in Tokyo.
Noah is originally from the snow and ice of Hokkaido. Tokyo is another world for her, somewhere that clinks with decadent vaporwave majesty and glitz, but equally somewhere cluttered with people and their dreams. Urgency runs through Thirty, whether it’s the panic of ‘lovelyghostwriter’, the analogue electro-disco feel in ‘Xiangziji alternative ver.’, or the rapid-fire hi-hats that typify many of the tracks, sufficiently summoning city life.
But, like the faded neon of the past and vaporwave inspirations, the draw to Noah’s Tokyo is idealised, both in its grit and in its glamour—take the late-night romance of‘Mugenhouei’, for example, or the slow, decayed collage of beats and synth in ‘Wind Blowing’.
With her ghostly vocals weaving their way through everything, Noah tells us the story of the Tokyo she wanted to inhabit with a diary of lo-fi, synth-soaked songs pockmarked with drum machines and all the chaos and nostalgia the city has to offer.
Pre-order here:
https://flau.bandcamp.com/album/thirty
Tracklist:
1. intro
2. 像自己 (Xiangziji)
3. 夢幻泡影 (Mugenhouei)
4. 18カラット (18 Carat)
5. メルティン・ブルー (Melting Blue)
6. 愛天使占 (lovelyghostwriter)
7. シンキロウ (Mirage)
8. 風在吹 (Wind Blowing)
9. 像自己 alternative ver. (Xiangziji alternative ver.)
No Comments