UNKNOWN ME - subtropics (2017)

Tokyo trip-ambient unit UNKNOWN ME make transportive vignettes with minimal means: soft-focus static, translucent loops, muted metronomes, field recordings. Comprised of DJ / producer Yakenohara, radloop label boss P-RUFF, electronic texturalist H. Takahashi (Constellation Tatsu, Where To Now?, birdFriend), and art director Osawa Yudai, the group’s sophomore offering, subtropics, furthers the fantasy Zen garden miniatures of their 2016 debut, sunday void. Whereas that collection themed itself as an innerspace voyage of domestic leisure, their latest journeys outward,
a lucidly dreamed globe-trot across continents, cities, and coastlines. Dazed tones spiral gracefully against hushed backdrops of floating chimes, distant wildlife, and prismatic vapor. These are less songs than spaces, blissed synthetic bio-domes awaiting habitation. Eight illusions of worlds unrealized, pleasures UNKNOWN.