Audio By Carbonatix
Multimedia artist Takagi Masakatsu works in an ambient medium on Journal for People, his third CD and second DVD release for Washington, D.C.’s Carpark label. The audio half of Journal stays within miniature-sounding orchestrations concocted mostly of piano melodies, varied instrumentation, and field recordings that get chopped and looped in a hard drive somewhere. Simple miracles in Masakatsu’s “Wonderland” churn in the slowly developing backward air organ tones and a rising and falling sampled vocal chorus, while “Waltz” isn’t a waltz at all; instead it’s grounded in a mild appliancelike drone as muted echoing alarm tones peck away at a playful meandering piano line. “Waltz” doesn’t feel like a tape of the cat dicking around on the piano in the den while the dishwasher runs. Masakatsu’s minimalist manipulation is soothing and textured, and even fires up a couple of memory cogs, initiating the kind of imagery he filmed all over the world for Journal‘s DVD portion. One chapter, “pia #12,” the twelfth installment of a series Masakatsu calls his “life work,” features blurry video fragments of ice skaters on an outside rink. The other DVD pieces are equally captivating, and in their understated production, Masakatsu ties globally collected film reels into an intimate, shimmering sphere of grand minimalist vision.
