akaaka - Life≤ (2010)

| Electronica | Ambient | Drone |

As the symbols-words-games suggests since from the title, Life≤ is a highly electronica-style album - combined with, as always, elements from both ambient and drone music. The 9-tracks full-length album is based on hallucinogenic experiences merged in a high-style way with a lonely midnight feeling. The album is full of dark, strange and ironic sounds and the way the songs are put together within its melody and progression are just as bizarre. The album holds a very psychedelic and non-standard sensing from the beginning to the end, but it's made in a such sublime way that it becomes a more thrilling and beautiful experience with every past song.

The album starts with the amazing 3-songs suite Madrugada - which starts with an electronic drone-style, goes through some beautiful ambient soundscapes and turns into an outlandish mix of musical hallucination. A fucking complete musical hallucination. Early Morning Trip and Back In Mindless Trails are the second highlights - two strangely terrifying and at the same time incredibly touching songs. But the masterpiece here is Slowing Dawn. I don't even know how to describe that. It's beautiful, glowing, horrorful, dark, thoughtfully emotional and completely touching. The strangeness is so intense and at the same time so stirring that words can do it no justice. Close your eyes, open your mind and dive into a whole dimension of awareness, swim into a whole new ocean of sound-experience. Furthermore, the album contains the full Light On Dunhill Lake single and closes with the astonishing I Can't Sleep ≤ Nevermind.

"And I was there... And it was beautiful. Can you imagine? I was alone at the street and it was barely illuminated. It was dark, and I was there, and I wasn't there. I was just a watcher. I was just watching, fearlessly watching. I think that's why I called it "Madrugada". "Madrugada"... Alone through the deep night." - akaaka

Catalog: VB-05 (Velvet Blue Records)
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