Review Summary: Take the 82nd most valuable intangible cultural asset of the Republic of Korea and
invite a few noisy friends over to jam
Ready?
Hit play on your tape deck and let a wailing hojok loop transport you from your small but comfortably furnished Tokyo flat to the Precambrian wilderness of Manchuria, where an icy wind sweeps over the primeval rock formations, carving the worn faces of ancient monoliths with intricate and indecipherable patterns.
Study them; acknowledge the inevitable passing of over burdened millennia and recognize the emerging shapes, forgotten figures and illegible calligraphy.
Slowly, agonizingly, merge with the somnolent landscape, stand hushed and unmoving. Inhale the vastness, dissolve into the silence. Become one with the emptiness. Listen. Hear. Understand.
Cautiously, finally, summon the courage to challenge your surroundings. Brush your frozen fingers against taut strings. Comfort your companions; encourage them to emerge from the silent crevices where they lurk like moles in fear of the crushing desolation. Let them loose on their blind search, their scratching and scrabbling reverberating through space as they surface from their soundless prison.
Boldly now, take up your tools and begin hurriedly uncovering the secret places of the earth. Bring to light long forgotten artefacts, devices whose elaborate mechanisms still function despite their eon long slumber. Set them upon the exposed tombs of mythic creatures, take shelter in the fragile skeletons of long dead monsters, and let the unleashed sounds fill the fragile orb surrounding you until the azure crystal begins to crack and shatter.
Do not hesitate, even as the shards of the spinning cosmos begin to crash around you, blazing as they form a fiery halo enveloping your shadowy form, shattering space, annihilating substance.
The ancient instruments will die of their own accord, emitting final, deathly wails akin to those that once emanated from the flesh stretched over the framework of bones that presently serve only to hold the earth together. At the same time, your tools will shatter; you will be left grasping emptiness, gasping in the burning air, freed from your mortal form, languidly dissipating in the furnace of infinity.
Now, at the end of time, when sound and space merge with time into the immensity of the celestial embrace, reach out and hit Stop.
Done?
Congratulations, you’re Otomo Yoshihide and you’ve just recorded the masterpiece that is Consume Red.
