Yaporigami - We Dance Alone

Yaporigami has taken a little break from albums, his last being Eye / Hand in November 2015. We Dance Alone (through Detroit Underground) has been confirmed for the 14th of February, and builds on the evolving approach seen in his more recent short releases.

2 months ago Yu posted here on WATMM that "I have been experimenting with 6/4 time signature recently and also trying to find a fine melting point between Techno, IDM, Braindance, Breakcore, Ambient and Electronica. I'm pretty convinced today that I have finally found / done it".

The new Digital/Cassette release will sound very different to his previous album and earlier. Snippets can be heard on SoundCloud now.

Out now on Detund Bandcamp.

Yu Miyashita:

"For this album, I wanted to try a different stylistic approach to my work. Unlike my previous works, these tracks are in a 6/4 time signature, and have distinct melodies.

I was so frustrated and bored with the sounds and structure of current techno, which I once tried to be close to.
In a nutshell, standard techno is all about these elements:
4/4 kicks; delicate change of some musical elements within a time span; and the addition/substitution of layers within the track.

I have been feeling that when I started making music, I was inspired by an array of different musical genres, but once I started making Techno, everything became so unemotional and routinized.
Alas, I decided to change things up and revisit my roots - the melodious music that inspired me at the beginning of my journey.

I was overcome with the feeling that too-technologically-driven music can sound dated and frivolous, rather quickly. however, we cannot totally ignore the cutting edge side of music; change is inevitable.

Thus I wanted to make music that is timeless and relevant.
The result is the album We Dance Alone"

Digging these sounds. Thanks for the rec.

Shadow Recorder & Truth Embedding are especially lovely.

Liking this new direction he is taking.

There are shades of Oversteps in some of those melodies.

honestly don't like the new direction that much. prefer the darker, less ornamental, more atonal earlier tracks

  On 2/16/2019 at 2:30 AM, darreichungsform said:

honestly don't like the new direction that much. prefer the darker, less ornamental, more atonal earlier tracks

I quite liked those aspects of the previous work too, he had a great sense of dynamics within the constraints of techno to be sure. I guess what I like most from this is to see an artist I enjoy experimenting and not settling into an established niche.

Same here. I really enjoyed those aspects of his earlier work (which he did so well), and this puts them aside and is very different, maybe not for everyone, however to my ears it still has that distinct Yaporigami feel which his earlier work had as well.

I loved the change-up during 2018 on things like Xinri, and this album furthers and fully embraces that exploration. Looking back, it is impressive to see how willing he is to move on and try something different before the established exhausts itself.

We Dance Alone for me is a case where the preview snippets might rub some the wrong way and don't do the full songs justice. Shadow Recorder is very pretty

  On 2/16/2019 at 2:22 AM, Username said:

Liking this new direction he is taking.

There are shades of Oversteps in some of those melodies.

Yeah good catch. The penultimate track Translucent Harbour has a melody from 3:43 through 4:20 which is strongly evocative of the melodies on Oversteps/Move of Ten. You could almost swear it was a direct lift (sounds so familiar) given how inconspicuously it would slot in to those albums, but on a quick skim through all the potential tracks I thankfully couldn't find a direct sample replica.

The title track We Dance Alone more strongly features an almost identical melody, starting at 1:17.

Like listening to this. It's all a bit samey, but as background music it's quite pleasant.

Agreed. Not a world beater, but very listenable. 9 tracks is about right, any more and it would detract. I cooked dinner to it every night this past week, each track is solid and has something nice going on. Cult of Beauty has grown on me a great deal, feels fully realised and delivers on Yu's aims.

Upon a few additional listens I have picked up some very Plaid sounding stuff as well.

Hi,

Very nice finding this thread.

Thank you for your interest. :)

Actually I was not referring to any of Autechre / Plaid stuff when I was making the album.

Also I did not sample any of the melodies from them either...

Could you clarify which of my tracks and which of Autechre / Plaid tracks sound very similar?

So that I can avoid ending up similar melodies in a future!

Best,

Yu

For me it wasn't so much so much sounding like identical melodies but more the synthesis having a similar quality to some Oversteps sounds on We Dance Alone, Orchid Hunting, Translucent Harbor, and Illusional Notation. Did you possibly use a Nord Lead for those bits? It saw heavy use on that LP iirc.

For the Plaid vibe I mentioned was strongest in Walking Atlas and Truth Embedding but I think is more just a product of the general melodic IDM influence you tried to incorporate.

I will also take this opportunity to say love your work and to keep on pushing yourself! :)

Hear hear, I must have listened to it 25 times already.

As mentioned above, I only detected a non-identical melody in We Dance Alone (starting at 1:17) and Translucent Harbour (3:43-4:20), which could easily insinuate itself into a dozen tracks on Oversteps/Move of Ten without detection. We assumed it was the gear you were using. The inadvertent similar melodies is fine with us, it is just interesting to pick apart. Apologies if those initial posts gave the impression of being accusations of sampling or direct influences.

There is a brief recurrent sound in Truth Embedding (e.g. 00:10, 00:29, 01:08, 01:27, etc.) that always sounds to me like the clatter of crockery, the closest the album comes to one of those moments of "omg outside the headphones" paranoia for me, like when you hear something similar to a police siren in track and your ears assume it is real.

  ...and some bass parts and high hats reminds me of late iron maiden... i mean wtf?! oversteps? lol

anyway, great record! im glad he found himself most of all. this LP does sound like home to me