My Collection Day 5 Ai Aso - The Faintest Hint
I'm a pretty big fan of minimalism in art. The ability to convey profound messages and evoke nuanced emotions from the simplest execution is so attractive to me. Ai Aso's music exemplifies minimalism in that way. The sound of her music from beginning to The Faintest Hint has been an ethereal joy. My favorite release of her's was Lone, a live retrospective of her career where subtly, the audience wound up being an instrument. The hushed silence of the crowd and their occasional ambient noise—a cough or hushed tones of conversation—were the stir of the sleeping beast covered in the gentle snow of her performance.
The Faintest Hint is a different beast than even the rest of her studio work. The mission statement of Itsumo is clear: the space between the notes vast between Ai Aso's breaths, her gently plucked guitar creaks like wood and she gently strains her voice in the last verse, then the slide of her hand against the strings of the guitar is like a lightning strike in comparison to the delicate beauty. My favorite band, fellow Japanese musicians Boris accompany Ai Aso on Scene, the next track. Ai Aso is content to let her gentle 'do do do' refrain play like an instrument against the backdrop of Boris' somewhat uncharacteristically somber—but exceedingly characteristically emotive—music and that's all the track needs. Ai Aso's vocals float against the brightness of Boris' sound on Scene.
Subtlety remains the name of the game on I'll Do It My Way, the tick of a drum machine and Ai Aso's melodic playing add a copy, playful atmosphere until Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))) and many others comes in to layer the guitar piece with another lightning strike of noise. When this part of the guitar stops, it feeds back for a second or two, then cuts off completely, displaying the calculation of what otherwise feels like naturalism or impulse. There are also more subtle arrangements that contrast the more contemporary sound of Ai Aso's previous efforts, which elevate the album into the direction of 'masterpiece' for me: as Ai Aso's constant fragile falsetto whistles by like a gentle breeze through a tree, Gone has Stephen O'Malley's pastoral synth slowly seep in like the guitar strings of Ai Aso's Rickenbacker are unraveling and bleeding it. Floating Rhythms evokes Hitchcock in the back of the mind with the metallic sound of abstract synthesizer.
Boris return again, composing the one-minute cadenza in Sight doing what they do best: guitar drone. It evokes the haze that the album art conveys, a half remembered still image, and the album is wrapped up in the same way it began: with plucked acoustic, but each note hangs in the air until the next one comes in, fading the line between itself and tape fuzz until the final note hangs and the creak of wood is heart: the instrument is retired. The Faintest Hint is in my opinion a metamorphosis for Ai Aso. At times, her previous works can feel a little claustrophobic even for how little happens in the album, but The Faintest Hint is an indication that she has barely scratched the sonic surface. I yearn for more every second I listen to this album.
