Dark Garden

Dark Garden, the new album of thrillingly idiosyncratic analog buzz by Nerve Net Noise – aka: homemade synth duo Hiroshi Kumakiri (Kumax) and Tagomago – is the perfect entry-point for listeners new to their singular sonic world. Where previous albums have explored a single sonic idea at a time, Dark Garden is their most varied and (relatively) accessible album yet. Which is not to say that it won’t cause heads to turn everywhere this is played in public. Dark Garden is an album of short, song-like synthesizer pieces, taking cues from manga, science fiction, early electronic music, and minimal techno… but as always, the Yokohama band resides firmly in their own inexplicable universe. It assimilates fractured beats, bubbling pulses, and impatient drones into an album that’s somehow both playfully alive and coldly menacing. In his liner notes, synth builder Kumakiri describes spirits that lurk in the shadows and watch people go about their lives, existing in a parallel world that brings to mind fairy tales and myth. Nerve Net Noise’s music is similarly just out of reach, present in the natural world but not quite a part of it. Praise for "Dark Garden": "Little slices of gorgeous repetitive parallel universe pop music." - Neil Campbell / Astral Social Club "Eleven palettes of surreal tessellations and hallucinatory miasma that move like fragments from a lost science-fiction soundtrack. Outstanding!" - Foxy Digitalis "... some of the most uniquely strange music this side of anywhere. Think Pan Sonic crossed with Jessica Rylan and you’re halfway there and still not even close. Rhythms are eccentric and repetitive, referencing techno, and yet they’re utterly undanceable. They’re wonderful, if they don’t drive you up a tree, that is! You love them or you hate them; there simply is no middle ground." - Rare Frequency