What Even is Music Anyways? As I listen to this album, I find myself wondering if this is a question that IS-CAT asked themselves before deciding to answer it via their compositions, or something they asked after putting together this album and listening back to it. My instinct suggests to me that it's the latter. Experimental music can come in two forms, a kind that exists to push music as a whole forward, versus more personal experiments of playing around and seeing what comes out of it, and I think that's what's happened here.
The end result is a pretty strange listen. The notes against the release state that it was the artist's first attempt at composing structured music, where I guess earlier compositions leaned more towards the ambient drone end of the spectrum. So what we get are a series of compositions that are pretty obviously the work of someone who understands music, while also at times feeling quite chaotic and even ramshackle. Tracks like the opener AKAI and the following track Light Theme feel sort of meandering, wondering in and out of key without a care in the world. There's a mad logic to it, while also feeling like there might be a lack of intentionality behind it.
At other points, the album flirts with cohesion, like the delicate Faontasy, the comparatively poppy Pauciloquent, and Everything in Threes - a waltz of sorts that evokes the feeling of talking to an oddball country bumpkin Final Fantasy 7 character.
I'll be honest, as a whole I found the album kind of exhausting. The album is at times fairly magical, but for what I think is more than an hour of music, I often struggled to find something to latch onto. I think that's why the more traditional moments stand out to me. Brief sections where I can stick my nose above the water and take in as much air as I can.
A sense of relief comes right at the very end with ReverbreveR, by far my favourite track here. Where the rest of the album has been these mad compositions, here we have what is ultimately a nostalgic pop instrumental. The kind of thing The Chromatics or Beach House might put out. It's gorgeous, and my only wish is that it had some vocals to elevate it higher.
It's enough to make me invested in this artist, despite struggling a bit with this particular album, because I think at their core is a pop tart heart, and I really hope they lean harder in that direction in the future.
