PSALM016: Lamentations by Sachi Kobayashi

“Soft vistas flicker with a cocoon-like resonance in the distances beyond our vision…Synthetic passages open our connection to the growing universe within ourselves. A quiet masterpiece.”
Foxy Digitalis

“Heavy and heartfelt…Becomes emotionally connective.”
Complex Distractions

Japanese experimental ambient producer Sachi Kobayashi debuts on Phantom Limb’s Spirituals imprint with her eloquent, cassette-tape sound design and synthesis, born from a love of ambient, house, and early choral music.

“Lamentations was born out of my sadness and grief towards the current wars,” writes Sachi Kobayashi. “I hope for people to be able to live in peace and safety as soon as possible.” Elegantly distilling sorrow and grief into arrestingly pretty layers of synth pads and softly saturating arpeggiation, Lamentations tells a very modern story of vicarious heartache.

Illuminating this, a key process in the album’s creation occurred not on Kobayashi’s laptop or DAW, but instead on her tape deck. She explains that, after creating an initial body of material, she subsequently edited, looped, distorted, and time-adjusted her own compositions using cassette tapes and re-processed these versions in her studio to create new works imbued with the analogue artefacts and unpredictable sonic shifts inherent to tape recordings. The resulting record may be crafted from electronic raw materials, but its human vulnerability and intentionality shines brightly throughout.

“I first debuted in 2017 making house music,” Kobayashi tells us. “But in recent years I have been working with ambient and experimental music. I have had musical training in choirs since I was a little girl, and I think that's where my current focus on making harmonised ambient music comes from.” This interest and experience in dance production is also apparent in her music, plenty of which can be called deconstructed, slowed, or beatless house music in its rhythms and sonics.

Tokyo-raised and Saitama Prefecture-based Sachi Kobayashi joins labelmates Eamon Ivri, Dau, Ibukun Sunday, Beqa Ungiadze, Suso Saíz, Menhir, Francsesca Ter-Berg, Dylan Henner, and Pram of Dogs (and more) on Phantom Limb’s Spirituals imprint, a sub-label offering works of high grade, emotive ambient and experimental music from emerging artists from across the world. Lamentations is her eighth album, including self-releases.

Ambient
Experimental