Soshi Takeda - Floating Mountains (2021)

Tokyo visionist Soshi Takeda’s second album took shape across eight months of the winter and spring, inspired by an iconic mid-80’s photography book of Chinese landscapes. Scenes of lantern-lit fishing boats on misty mountain lakes seeded a mood of hidden paradise, ancient waterways snaking secret paths into the past.

Recorded at his home studio using exclusively hardware synths and samplers from the 1990’s, the six songs of Floating Mountains (plus digital-only bonus cut, “Deep Breath,” from the recent 2nd Life Silk compilation) evoke shrouded cinematic vistas of liquid skies and shining lakes, like some Li River twist on Balearic half-light house. Shades of cosmic drift and crystalline electronica ebb and flow within the nocturnal pulse, pagodas and pearls reflecting the waning moon: “I hope you can feel the cool and exotic atmosphere.”