Review Summary: is its own reward
Hinako Omori's lovely floaty very-much-but-not-exclusively ambient debut is
A Journey…. Is it? The record's intrigue - though also my biggest (soft) gripe - is that its progress is so frictionless that I am often unclear what kind of journey either we or Omori are supposed to be taking here. Some pieces are diffuse and ornamental in the fashion of fluffy ambience (most journeys are indeed more segue than substance); others are more succinct and offer travel cushions for the flakier listener's attention span. "The Richest Garden" and "Snow" are beautiful showcases of the latter, coincidentally the only cuts with the kind of songwriting that warrants this record's pigeonholing as ambient pop.
Pop, for the most part, is jettisoned within Omori's spacescape, though this is no great loss: the record's longest cut and standout song (a term that holds little water here) "Will You Listen In?" is a gloriously immaterial reverie, generous and inviting for the listener to drift in and out as seamlessly as its interweaving layers of the title refrain. Listen for as long and as closely as you so please, posits Omori: it's one of those pieces so blissful that its expansive insistence on one single endlessly repeated idea is entirely warranted. The effect is spellbinding, and it flows smoothly on to the following "Heartplant"'s delightfully understated to-ing and fro-ing, but it finds itself a little exhausted by album as whole. The parts that are engaging are scarcely more 'active' or even creative than the ones that aren't, but the difference is pronounced enough that your "Levitation"s and "Ocean"s feel like minor disappointments where they should be unobtrusive extensions of atmosphere. The upshot? I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this as a situational record: work it into your study playlists, your bliss-outs, your tightly curated
to the well-soundtracked night's sleep you so deserve. Recommend it to your new age pals regardless of whether or not you've heard it (trust me, they'll
love that for you). My nag is that it's a strong enough listen that I don't want it to be situational! Hinako Omori has some gorgeous, precious pieces on show here, and I want her to make a whole album of them that I will listen to all the time and with great zeal. Maybe she is better at beginnings than journeys. To be continued!
