still obsessed with this.
additionally, 2020’s “formula” by you ishihara rules and here’s one of the only reviews of it i can find, from a mysterious “c_deep”. gonna try this phase thing soon (downloading audacity for the first time in forever)
It’s been 23 years since Passivite, 15 years since Perfect Place To Hideaway, 7 years since his remixes for Nisennenmondai and six years since the last Ogre You Bastard album he produced. Not only is You Ishihara one of the very few singers / writers / performers who managed to become authentic in a culture and language inherently foreign to him but he’s also one of the very few musicians from the 80s who managed to expand with the times and apply his knowledge to produce truly modern (or unheard?) records like the japanese version of Boris’ Smile or that fantastic run of Yura Yura Teikoku albums with a conceptionalist approach which also showed in his remix work for Yura Yura Teikoku or Nisennenmondai.
All this is good to know when approaching Formula. The original Formula (on vinyl and cd) consists of 2 lengthy pieces of busy ambiance recordings (city life basically) under which 6 new songs of Ishihara and friends (yes, Michio Kurihara is back again, too) are recognisable. Most will be immediately thrown off, as the ambiance recording will certainly be “too loud” for those who have come for the music. However, if you dedicate your attention to this record, you will notice the contrast between the mostly cool, calm and steady music and the busy surroundings creating a sense of distance to get lost in. Also, the ambiance recordings are carefully edited in order to work with the music’s flow, even as they threaten to overpower the music completely. Synths and backward effects are also at times subtly employed, creating a hypnotic and surreal effect clashing with the bursting-with-information hyperrealistic ambiance recordings.
As for the music, it’s is firmly in White Heaven / Passivite / The Stars territory, only even more mature and subdued. 4 songs have lyrics, there’s one keyboard instrumental and one lengthy jam which contrasts Kurihara’s spiky guitar with Ishihara’s haunting mellotron to a steady groove. Really, the music is great, brilliant as ever, shame that you can barely hear it, but more of that later.
About three months after the original issue, Ishihara released the deluxe edition of Formula on bandcamp, on which he added two more tracks. These tracks are basically the ambiance recordings as on the original album coupled with noisy electronics, think Merzbow or some of the more experimental Yura Yura Teikoku tracks. These noises don’t run all the way through and only at points do they dominate the ambiance recordings. They do, however, add a more dystopian, almost sci-fi atmosphere to the ambiance recordings.
There could end the review of the Formua deluxe edition. However, if you put the four tracks of the deluxe edition into a computer, turn the phase of the “ambiance and synth” tracks, mix them together with the original Formula tracks, you will receive a whole new record leaving only the music and synth noises (!). The ambiance recordings cancel each other out perfectly (!). When you do this, you will notice that the synth noises have carefully been added to the musical tracks, pitches and timings fit. 3 tracks (No.2,4 and the gentle fifth number about self doubt, barely audible on the original Formula) are left untouched by synths and are audible now in stunning clarity. (Could this whole concept about distance maybe also be a way of masking material deemed too personal, too insecure? Willingly or not, this deluxe edition with the ambiance and synth version is, apart from its own program, also a key to “unlocking the music”.) As for the other three songs, they kind of remind me of those Boris and Merzbow records (if one actually played the Gensho records at the same time), though the musical basis is pure You Ishihara. Wild stuff.
And then, if you’re really crazy, it’s also possible (just with phase shifting and stereo to mono conversions) to create a version of Formula that puts the music in the front, accompanied by the softened mayhem of the ambiance tracks and noisy synths. It’s this version that has become my go-to version.
You might argue that it’s pointless reviewing records that aren’t even real, but remember, Ishihara is a conceptionalist and producer. My point is that Formula (especially in the deluxe Bandcamp edition) is some next level ZAIREEKA sh.t. Only that Zaireeka, or Gensho for that matter, was about adding up (the discs), Formula is about addition, reduction and combination. This record is one of a kind and that’s why I give it 5 stars.
