Review Summary: When madness and genius collide...
To fully understand Wonderland Falling Yesterday‘s
Enchanted Landscape Escape, one needs to paint a mental image of the piece. Imagine a dark cave; deep, bottomless, and void of life. The cave is somehow familiar, but the darkness of the place makes the familiarity obfuscated, displaying only shades and outlines. Diving in deeper into its depths, one can here the sounds of the place, emanating unsettling noises and tunes. However, this seemingly endless cave has walls, for the sounds and music reverberates off of these walls, inundating the explorer with the musical madness and genius that is Katsuhiko Maeda.
Enchanted Landscape Escape plays a lot like an ambient record, minus, well, the
ambiance. Instead of the listener being enveloped by dense, suffocating, and calm tones, they are instead thrown into that deep cave. You see, the album is incredibly hollow and airy, lacking any bass or bottom tones to anchor everything down. Instead, the music freely flutters about, aimlessly coming from all sides in a lackadaisical fashion. This minimalist approach often makes the album starkly calming. However, certain segments of
Enchanted Landscape Escape can be surprisingly
frightening, and incredibly unsettling. These moments are most notably situated in the beginning of the album, with songs like “Breath Cannon Escape Wall” featuring subtle static, mournful strings, and odd sound samplings. These samplings feature crying and gasping mangled by electronics, making them even more strange and terrifying. Calling tracks such as these “dark” is an understatement, as they are more looming and bleak than anything.
Yet
Enchanted Landscape Escape is at its most alluring when these dark moments coalesce with the more beautiful parts. “Old Winter Ferris Wheel” is sprinkled with bouncy electronics, with a menacing organ playing in the background. The latter part of the track features an almost inaudible piano suite, like something you would hear out of a grandiose symphony It’s half whimsical, half ominous, making for an utterly strange and unique experience. From this track on, the album becomes less minimalist and dark. More strings and piano are featured, picking up a noticeable amount of melody and harmony, rather than disorganized noise. The remaining tracks of the album, however, actually hold a lot of beauty within them, seemingly shedding much of the shadowy veneer.
This cave
Enchanted Landscape Escape has placed us in isn’t an endless void after all. There is light at the end, barely visible, but most definitely there. The calm sounds towards the end of this cave beckon, as do the lovely sounds of “Sleeping Under the Rainbow” and “Purple Ripple.” Towards the very end of this journey, the music once again dips into more minimalist territory. However, unlike at the outset, the music isn’t off-putting or terrifying, but instead, wholly welcoming and relaxing. “Wonderland Falling Today” brings about an end to the album. It’s more claustrophobic than the other tracks, being heavily laden with sounds, noises, and melody. The ocean waves lap in the background, and slight breathing can be heard. Piano keys delicately play, and the entire thing ends with footsteps and “goodbyes.”
Enchanted Landscape Escape straddles the most endearing parts of Katsuhiko Maeda’s (of World’s End Girlfriend fame) psyche. He always seems to stumble over his own ambitions, either ending up displaying brilliance, or falling flat on his face. Yet this album is Maeda at his most bizarre, as well as at his most creative. It’s a convergence of beautiful terror, making for a truly majestic dichotomy.
