It's not just me who AOKI's sound fits to at present, probably. It seems
lyrics, story or message is taken seriously more and more in music, I think
it's almost like letter. However, music can be also like icon and that type
of ones make my brain freeze. Calm and frozen at the same time, it makes
place of mind centered. Please keep doing it.

text : Haruomi Hosono (sketch show )

This is funk.Even though it isn't the one which refers to Parlament stuff or style of that type of music, however, this is 'funk'. The sign has been there for a long time. It is well known that AOKI takamasa's musical theme and interest is always in pursuing beat-based groove. But the change of manner in this latest is evident when I compared with his early works like "SILICOM" that had overwhelmed listener by absolutely enormous informations. Of course, like "indigo rose" and also non-beat-oriented "Quantum", he had smartly appeared to the scene at the point attention to lap-top music got its climax and gradually towards to beauty of subtraction while undertaking and investigating complexity that is feature of that type of music at once through on "SILICOM" and "SILICOM two".
This latest "simply funk" loudly declares complete form/achievement of his transition. The fact which controls "simply funk" is bald element which omits decoration, for example, M-2'superstrings 76' and M-7'protocol m.t.t.' which wakes up cool excitement by great tension and polished detail, M-6'dancing queen' which is slow motion house that has feeling like original transforming of beat-sense on Moodymann's Mahogany music(What a intentional title it is!), M-9'the elegant universe' which transfers full of anxiety mood driven by very fast BPM to stimulation through loop, M-10'monza'that AOKI had edited F1 machine's exhaust note which was collected by himself (It is the coolest sound in the world for him.) There is one plain statement here. He expresses Cutting off useless factor, fixing focus tightly, extracting very simple and stable 'purity' and 'strength', in short, the process is one which we can interpret as "funk".

And also, there is a huge change. It is introducing of songs. It isn't ones like song of robot-voice which is attempted on "indigo rose" or other singers voice like Tsujiko Noriko who had also taken part in the album but AOKI's own 'voice'.He is truly singing in a clear, resonant voice on chorus of M-1'that melody..' or M-4'walk on the ocean'. However, I want to emphasize it isn't the result of approach to plain pop-format(When "indigo rose" had been released, being pop-song was clearly considered, I guess.)
His voice suddenly appears on unexpected point in the whole flow of the album and naturally disappear again without aiming at strangeness.Even though, there isn't so many examples that vocal-introduced electronica makes uncommon result in these days, it is sure that this balance of structure draws a line between "simply funk" and a lot of others. And 'walk on the ocean' is cover version of Toad The Wet Sprocket(4-piece-band that is from Santa Barbara, CA and is evaluated as "right successor of REM". Organized in
1986.And broke up in 2000.)that he mentions his favorite band. This cover had already been played on live leading to the album.

Since his debut on 2001, AOKI takamasa has thrown very flourishing creativity to silver discs. This album is the latest and present result of AOKI who has released 5 albums through his 3 years activity and masterpiece which is addressed on the highest point of his career.He expresses will to going forward at first keeping trial and error without fearing changes.And if he simply expressed evidence of his growth through each albums, it would be collected in two powerful words-'purity' and 'strength', I think.

Finally, I would like to put massage from AOKI. "Even though it's I always take care of, but especially this time I made album considering quality and position of sound, so that I'm glad if you could listen to it on sound and sound system as good as you can without transferring mp3s."