Review Summary: Tentenko X: No angel, all noise
Tentenko is an ex-idol freelance artist who runs her own label and has released an extensive range of experimental pop and techno EPs. This review is part of an ongoing series dedicated to exploring her discography. For a point of reference and orientation to her discography as a whole, please see the first instalment in the series, the review for Good Bye, Good Girl.
With the dust barely settled over her tortuous original/remix album with Sofheso and her latest round of Saeki Kenzo-produced Halmens covers, Tentenko decided that early 2016 was still very much collaboration season and brought us perhaps the most fated partnership of her career so far. MikaTen sees her teaming up with legendary Japanoise group Hijokaidan’s Toshiji Mikawa to deliver fifty-one minutes of mostly original noisetimes.
Angel Noise is a decent showing of both artists’ idiosyncrasies, but I went into it with a scepticism that this wouldn’t be the case; as far as the Hijokaidan experience goes, this is not Tentenko’s first rodeo. As a member of BiS she performed a couple of records and a set of live shows with Hijokaidan in tow, under the banner BiSkaidan. This was less a creative meeting of minds and more a necessary step of BiS’ journey towards the lowest common denominator of whatever seemed an obvious opposite of what idol was supposed to be; the live shows were an aptly revolting mess and the “idol x noise” brand was milked for all it was worth - at the end of the day, BiSkaidan was a gimmicky set of BiS staples with extra feedback stapled on top.
As such, the degree to which Tentenko pulls her weight here is a relief. Her input is all over this thing, as made immediately apparent by the opener “Dendrocacalia Crepidifolia” in which her churning synthscape makes a robust seedbed for Mikawa’s winding patterns of noise. While obviously the more abrasive part of the arrangement, it’s notable that Mikawa’s input here is also the more delicate; Tentenko sets him up with a foundation over which to permeate his squeaks and squawks with the refinement of a seasoned soloist. This arrangement suits both parties nicely, so it’s satisfying to hear much of the album run with itt. “Mozukuzu Mo”, for instance, is essentially the same trick as the opener but with churning synths swapped out for minimal techno beats.
All things considered,
Angel Noise is a decidedly fun album, not in the crass novelty way that the BiSkaidan albums were (probably) ‘fun’, but in a wry, slowburning sense that either you’re in on or you’re not. It’s fun in the way that
Dokusai was fun, though substantially less crude and, dare I say it, more mature; this pairs tunes might be aesthetically stark and devoid of all tonality, but they show their hand in momentary flashes of personality that go a long way towards fleshing out this album’s tone. It’s in the deliberately misplaced title (there is nothing angelic to be found here) and those adorable in-joke grins they sport on the cover; it’s in the fifth track “Nomizakari Honojigumi”’s waddling hint of a beat and wailing imitation of a siren and “Mood In The Box”’s goofball briskness; it’s in the way that the Tentenko originals “Don Pi” (aka “Don’t Pee) and “Uzu” both get the BiSkaidan treatment of Original + Death By Noise, where unlike the BiS tracks these two feel like they were destined for this kind of execution to begin with; hell, it’s in the way “Orange no Tako" is anchored in a ***ing click track (always a power move for funloving noisemongers; see Melt-Banana’s “Bright Splat (Red Point, Black Dot)”). This last track in particular is so wry in its slow, minimal nails-across-chalkboard that I would happily listen to Tentenko’s firm, deadpan announcement of the title on loop all day. Orange no…tako! yes very.
Needless to say, fun alone was never going to be enough to sustain a noise album of this length and minimalism, and so some parts are indeed less fun than others. “Trobinchou”, for instance feels like one of
Conduct of Human Beings or
Dokusai’s purgatorial moments repeated to oblivion - don’t believe your media player here, no way is this *** shorter than three minutes! Although the noise elements are particularly extreme, it feels largely like a rehash of a sound Tentenko had largely moved on from. And then there’s “Toshi-chan to Ten-chan”, the duo’s great ode to themselves. The 10-minute monster is comprised of a single two bar glitch loop brought to the table and gradually moderated by Tentenko (I presume?), over which Mikawa (I presume?) conjures up sounds evocative of a sick, mid-key pissed off android wildcat. It’s ‘fun’ until suddenly, roughly 5-6 minutes in, it’s not; everything about the existence of this track is to be commended, but you can ready up your skip button for relistens. Fortunately, the closer “Kanburia” has more going on in the beat department, bringing a
Hibiya Kouen-style slamdown to round things on a high note. That just about does it for
Angel Dust - it’s great for what it sets out to be, though its most memorable cuts won’t necessarily have you itching to spin it again. I’d definitely recommend it to fans of either contributing artist, but the crucial takeaway here is less the music and how it demonstrates Tentenko’s usual style being complemented by an even-handed collaboration. We’ll see more of this…
