Aus & The Humble Bee - Chalybeate (2026)

Chalybeate began as a document of a month-long stay by Tokyo-based producer aus in Ikaho, a historic onsen town in Japan, during the autumn of 2024.
Working from field-recordings captured inside multiple ryokan baths, aus synthesized the subterranean movement of the onsen's with local details: the bubbling of source water, the hoozuki (lantern plants) and furin (wind chimes) placed at each ryokan (inn), and the surrounding insects and birds. Rather than portraying Ikaho as a landscape, the recordings trace the town's respiration.
The material was first presented on site as an installation called IKAHO SURROUNDING - AMBIENT ONSEN unfolding across eight different onsen, where visitors listened while soaking in roten-buro (open air hot baths). The project drew wide attention for proposing listening as a bodily act (音泉音浴), inseparable from heat, moisture, and duration.

Chalybeate re-constructs that installation as an album. The recordings were left to sit for a year within Ikaho's air and humidity, allowing the sound itself to slowly change. The title refers to Ikaho's iron rich mineral water, known as Kogane-no-yu (golden water), which oxidizes upon contact with air and leaves rust colored traces in its baths. Following this process, the album's sound was repeatedly re submerged and re worked, gradually absorbing a corroded texture..tape hiss, gentle distortion, and subtle fluctuations rise quietly, like steam. What remains is not documentation but residue.
Mixing was handed over to Manchester based producer The Humble Bee by Craig Tattersall, known for his releases from Dauw, IKKI, Motion Words, Boomkat Editions and also as the member of The Boats and The Remote Viewer, because aus exhausted himself traversing Ikaho's steep stone steps. The exchange mirrors the work itself: from bathtub to hot spring, from sound to something that surrounds the body.

Woodwind like tape noise and the movement of water dissolve into one another. The music does not arrive all at once. It settles slowly, as if lowering into warm water.