A Living Soundtrack
Tezukayama
Strange Daisy Records
New Orleans’s A Living Soundtrack is a band most noted for their performance’s audio-visual pairings. However, Tezukayama excites newcomers to consider how the live video accompaniment adds up to the picturesque atmosphere exploding in their imagination from the album’s Big Bang of electro-acoustic ambience. Much of their colorful musical foliage draws its uniqueness from a reliance on chiptune, often questioning if a more appropriate name for the trio wouldn’t have been A Video Game Soundtrack. However, Tezukayama carries the listener on a more pensive, calming journey than the sugary-ADD EDM of bit-bands like Anamanaguchi. While the EP possess the at-ease cadence of a lazy river, its jazz undertones flourish it with the scenery and unpredictability of drifting downstream rather than the sedative repetition of a self-contained water park reprieve. “Nanika Ni Yoru” and “Haru” would perfectly fit the soundtrack to a retro-game like Super Mario World or the eight-bit Mega Man series. Contrastingly, “Wijarn Pongpanich” features a fluid fusion of jazz with its hypnotic bleeps-and-bloops, while “Kumano Kodo,” the album’s only vocal track, embraces the ‘80s synth-pop sound that is all the rage right now. Tezukayama is easily the most interesting and enjoyable album put out by a local band thus far in 2018. Don’t miss it.
