By Deuce

You know what the Tanuki Project has managed to achieve on its 4-track Extended Player entitled Adamant_Chapter#01? A cohesive project that sounds exactly what one in the 1960’s or 1970’s would speculate that music 50 or 60 years later—in the new millennium, when the year 2000 was a mere afterthought—would sound like.

Big Eightball said it a while back, “We’re living/what used to be the space age future/to acid dropping hippies/now they run the country”. The Tanuki Project’s latest release is further testament to that fact, and embodies almost everything that largely electronic music in this era sounds like.

Most of the songs are desultory. There’s a female vocalist on nearly all of them, but it still sounds like she’s touching down on what are instrumentals. This is far from the typical intro, verse, hook, verse, bridge, grand finale type collection of songs. The bass is oftentimes deep, so much so in fact you’ll find yourself repeatedly turning the volume down to protect the health of your speakers while giving this one a whirl.

It’s also long and a little spooky, especially when combined with the female vocalist’s—who goes by the name of Nady—unique form of singing. Sometimes she’ll get stuck on a solitary word and hit it numerous times on what could be multiple tracks or just some clever vocal effects. Other times she stretches out her high notes as long as the majority of the synths and bass notes are.

In fact, she frequently has good melodies, like on the upbeat “Dystopia”. But again, her style is decidedly quirky, combining a heavy dose of whispering with that said melody to produce something that sounds futuristic, especially by the standards of the past, if such a statement isn’t too obvious.

The pair manages to return to earth on the final two songs of this outing, the piano-infused “Stone” and “Hope”, although the former is much more accessible by most standards. It makes use of one of the classic drum patterns from the 1980’s or 1990’s and  which is timeless in its own right. Plus, the pairing of piano and strings is found here, which is as rap as rap gets in almost any age (especially when samples are involved, which certainly does not sound like the case here).

It just goes to show the duo (also comprised of producer Legyl) can switch things up when they want to stay entertaining.