Luminescent Creatures takes its name from the closing track of Ichiko Aoba’s previous effort, 2020’s Windswept Adan, an enchanting and richly rendered record that expanded both the Japanese singer-songwriter’s palette and audience. Working with arranger Taro Umebayashi and creative director Kodai Kobayashi, Aoba’s ambitious vision for that project included a script for an imaginary movie, telling the story of a girl who is exiled to Adan Island. By the end, Aoba wrote in the album’s companion book, “the body of the girl had vanished instead, transformed and reborn into a variety of living things.” That may leave the island uninhabited by humans, but Aoba has no trouble furthering the fantastical journey, breathing music into all other life forms that permeate the universe she’s built around it. Inspired by her visits to Japan’s Ryukyu Archipelago, she augments her field research with vivid imagination and luscious orchestration, so that the immense can feel improbably immersive. “Inside each of us there is a place for our stars to sleep,” Aoba sings on ‘Luciférine’, diving beyond a place, beyond sleep, into dreams.
1. COLORATURA
An array of hummed voices and a single piano note usher us into the world of Luminescent Creatures, the ocean as Aoba imagines it: awash in colour and light. Tender waves give way to a raging storm, which drags a pirate ship – void of humanity but serving, perhaps, as a vessel for the listener’s point of view – underwater. As the song’s second half rises, it mirrors the opening of an eye, met with a flood of quiet, sparkling beauty. It’s only a first glimpse, but it already feels like a privilege to have taken the dive.
2. 24° 3′ 27.0″ N 123° 47′ 7.5″ E
The album’s second track has a situating effect, rooting Aoba’s oceanic wandering in a specific tradition. These are the coordinates of the lighthouse on Japan’s southernmost Hateruma island, where the local community taught Aoba a folk tune to sing at a ceremony. It remains mostly unadorned, but the lightest touches amplify its resonance.
3. mazamun
‘mazamun’ transports us to the edge of the galaxy, but Aoba’s sound only grows softer and prettier the further she zooms out. I could try to describe this swirling lullaby of a song, but the instrumentation strikes as the purest manifestation of Aoba’s own resplendent language: “Weaving drops of rain as a gift for the bugs and roots/ A message from mycelium/ Open your map, and let a raft of light float upon/ The roars of the sea.”
4. tower
Aoba may once again be gazing at the sky, but the longing in ‘tower’ is more familiar, romantic, earthbound: the windowsill kind. The track, like so many of Aoba’s compositions, sways with whimsy, but there’s a sense of anticipation in each pause, a willingness to disrobe the appearance of magic for a real response – for the chance to indulge, put plainly, in one last dance. Throughout Luminescent Creatures, light of all forms represents something everlasting and cosmic. Here, it’s a small confirmation, the warmth of three words whispered in one’s ear, perhaps for the final time.
5. aurora
Have you ever seen the northern lights? I did for the first time this year, and I wish I had ‘aurora’ to soundtrack it. Acoustic and softly sung, audibly instinctual, the song encapsulates the feeling of being consumed by nothing but “that beautiful sky/ where borders melt/ see how they melt.” There are times when the beauty spread before your eyes is so indisputable that you can’t help but see, but Aoba nudges us to see the truths etched deeper within: We’re not connected to any of it, just part of the same tremendous whole.
6. FLORA
“Is it true that we are reborn so many times over?” Aoba asks at the start of ‘FLORA’, and the song, hushed in its dreaminess, seems to evade an answer. But in her lyrics, Aoba’s imagination springs up. A lost ship, perhaps the one that sunk us into Luminescent Creatures, offers tears from a grey sky. A song, fragmented as it may be, never ends. “These forms are not ours,” Aoba concludes, but their radiance hardly ever wanes.
7. Cochlea
This is a chiming instrumental interlude; think of it as boundaries melting.
8. Luciférine
After a series of more understated tracks, ‘Luciférine’ is glowing and grandiose in that way that Windswept Adan fans will appreciate. With layers of harp, violin, and flute rising over a bed of rippling piano, it’s a wondrous, multi-faceted journey, one that relishes in the joy of movement more than the pursuit of a destination. It swims, waltzes, swallows, and sighs, as if stumbling upon the biggest relief in the universe. “Here, life can be found from long before words were ever born.” Found, and ceaselessly reborn.
9. pirsomnia
Flickering and spectral, ‘pirsomnia’ focuses on “the sound of awoken voices blooming,” as Aoba sings on the previous track – elevated, if only for a moment, with the help of booming orchestration.
10. SONAR
How can a single droplet hold seven colours? How can it tremble? These are not questions Aoba’s music is concerned with; it simply hears, absorbs. Her vocals are often gentle, but here they teeter on the edge of fragility. It’s her own voice that glimmers beyond the darkness, and it couldn’t be more breathtaking.
11. 惑星の泪 (Wakusei No Namida)
On a human level, few musical styles feel as raw as the fingerpicked acoustic ballad. It’s a deeply familiar form for Aoba, who embraces it on Luminescent Creatures’ closing track, while interweaving it, crucially, with the sound of wind. Aoba’s prompt was for Taro Umebayashi to make a synthesizer “sound like stardust blowing in the wind,” but her voice only sounds firmer, more resonant – far from a quiver. According to Aoba, the synthesizer ultimately reaches a frequency that’s imperceptible to humans, an offering to all earthlings. “A gift for the bugs and roots.” And a gesture, like the whole album, that leaves the rest of us humans teeming with appreciation.
