Transparence, Asobi Seksu’s new 10″, showed up on eMusic a few weeks back, settling my fears that it would be a vinyl-only release. I’ve been listening to it a fair amount, and it’s pretty enjoyable, though nothing earth-shaking.
The title track, which appeared on Hush earlier this year, is given a brief new intro, galloping drums in place of the original rather ambient fade-in, which makes the song sound marginally more rock n’ roll, and works well in the context of an opening track. It’s a decent — but not fantastic — song, with some excellent parts that unfortunately don’t quite pull together correctly, and suffering (like the rest of Hush) from a lack of dynamics. The EP also has a remix of the song by Aa, which pushes the tribal drumming up a bit and otherwise cuts the song up a bit and makes it rather annoying.
The other two tracks — both Hush outtakes, apparently — are both pretty good, though. “Miniature Cities” is another slow, minimalist dream pop number, in the style of much of Hush, but it works pretty well, and probably benefits from being separated from its similar-sounding brethren. It builds to a nice crescendo around the four minute mark, when the sound thickens considerably into a dense, swirling soundscape. That said, it would have worked better in the “classic” Asobi Seksu style, with said crescendo slathered in layers of big guitars.
My favorite track is “Urasai Tori”, a goofy little pop song with a shifty rhythm, a rather mournful harmonica, and rapid-fire woodpecking as a percussive backdrop. It’s lightweight but rather pretty, and while I can see how it wouldn’t have fit onto Hush that well, it seems a shame to leave it buried as a b-side.
Meanwhile, Asobi Seksu has another record coming out, on Polyvinyl on October 30th. Called Rewolf, it’s a collection of acoustic re-recordings of songs from the band’s catalog (along with a few covers), recorded at Olympic Studios in London. There’s an MP3 of their cover of Hope Sandoval’s “Suzanne” here — very nice, with a heavy 60’s vibe courtesy of the fairly ornate production involving chimes and flute as well as strings. If the rest of the record sounds like this, I think it will be quite good. (If nothing else, it has the best cover art on an Asobi Seksu release since the “Stay Awake” single in 2007.)
Ack Phhht! 
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