Returning From Whence You Came: Exploring Ichiko Aoba’s Luminescent Creatures
With a soft, exploratory ambient folk sound, the Japanese singer-songwriter returns to a watery world of her own creation.
Ichiko Aoba is nothing short of a musical storyteller. Her soft, dreamy voice, paired with her usual blend of acoustic guitar, occasional synths, and self-composed orchestrations, have always given listeners a strong sense of nostalgia and place.
A far cry from her six prior albums of jazz-inspired folk, 2020 saw the release of Windswept Adan, a concept album to serve as the plot and soundtrack of a fictional film. The album tells the story of a girl disowned by her family and sent to the fictional island of Adan, said to trap any human that sets foot ashore for eternity. She finds varying marine life as well as the luminescent creatures, mute beings that trade seashells instead of words, and as the album approaches its finale, the girl attends a ceremony in which her physical form leaves the island to be reincarnated as a plethora of other living creatures.
As Windswept Adan ends and with a title taken directly from that same final song, Aoba’s newest work, Luminescent Creatures, begins. Meant to serve as something that is a continuation yet not a sequel, the album, released in late February, once again combines her affinity for the natural world with the same ambient folk sound.
Both albums tell a similar story, one of connecting with nature and intertwining with it, that we are still to return to the nature from which we were born. However, while the former contains a more linear narrative, the latter holds a variety of experiences and a zoomed-out view of ‘being’ from plankton to the cosmos.
Like her stories, Aoba’s creative process is also very heavily intertwined with the natural world, something that holds evident in her work on Luminescent Creatures, as she made a return trip to the Ryūkū archipelago (the same location that inspired Windswept Adan) to live with the people there and examine how exactly the natural world around them shapes their lives. Her experiences with traveling to these more remote islands, diving and documenting how the world around her exists and works, shape the album and its sound as a whole.
Both Windswept Adan and Luminescent Creatures were produced together with notable Japanese composer and friend of Aoba’s, Taro Umebayashi (who those who dabble in anime may recognize from the soundtrack of Yuri!!! On Ice). Aoba cites that the two of them were always able to understand where the other was coming from with ideas on the albums, and that this additional set of eyes and ears opened her horizons to new sounds, which are more than evident on the album.
The 11-track work opens with “COLORATURA,” a song that carries the feel of breaking beneath the waves, with the whimsical sounds of wind chimes blending perfectly with the piano and Aoba’s ethereal voice.
Immediately in its wake comes the desolate yet still calming “24° 3' 27.0" n, 123° 47' 7.5" e,” a work inspired by her time in Ryūkū with the name being the direct coordinates of a lighthouse in the archipelago. The song is one of the most unique pieces I have ever encountered, with it being a transposition of a traditional folk song of the people on Hateruma Island and the final verse being sung in their native tongue.
As the album continues on, this lonely yet whimsical water-connected world draws you in further with sounds of whale calls on songs like “mazamun” and interlude “Cochlea,” and synth patterns reminiscent of sonar and echolocation on “SONAR” and “pirsomnia.” The album’s final song, “惑星の泪 (Wakusei no namida),” which translates literally to “tears of the stars,” ends way later than the listener would be led to believe, as the pitch of the final note drops to one that humans cannot hear— but whales can.
It’s on this almost science-fiction track that we get a hint of a possible (yet unconfirmed) continuation to the series of works, with the final lyric of the song being “はじめまして,” a way of saying “pleased to meet you.” I like to believe it is another story of reincarnation, similar to what the protagonist in Windswept Adan experienced, making it a line of belief akin to samsara, although, in multiple interviews, Aoba seems to dodge every question regarding the story of her albums expertly, in essence leaving it up to us as listeners to determine our own plot line.
The critical acclaim of this album and its predecessor is amazing, as it’s extremely rare for a singer-songwriter from another country who does not sing in English to garner this much attention. But Aoba herself says that music is universal, that language is a boundary for ourselves as humans and we should be able to melt those boundaries down and enjoy these pleasures regardless of our understanding. And with her music, she does so almost intuitively, allowing myself and others who do not speak a single word of Japanese to experience the stories she tells just as vividly. In a way, we’re as connected through this music as she wants us to know.
Luminescent Creatures shows us not only our place in the world, but our connection to it and how we will always return to the same things we started from. A little bit existential, but if the story is this calm, who am I to care?
Album Ranking:
1. pirsomnia
2. 24° 3' 27.0" n, 123° 47' 7.5" e
3. mazamun
4. Luciférine
5. aurora
6. COLORATURA
7. SONAR
8. tower
9. FLAG
10. 惑星の泪
11. Cochlea