Album info: VGMdb
Listening: YouTube, Spotify
Info
The title of Ishibashi’s second 2012 album translates to something like The Different Origin/Lineage of ColdolR, but the album page doesn’t really explain what any part of that means and I certainly don’t know. I guess “ColdolR” is probably related to the “Cold Doll” in the track titles, but that word only appears in the album title and isn’t referenced in either the overall or individual track commentary (or in fact anywhere else on the internet), so what it is—your guess is as good as mine.
So anyway, this album is directly inspired by the artwork of Midori Hayashi, who makes creepy child dolls out of polymer clay and animal remains. “Creepy” is her word, not mine! (Well, really, she answered in Japanese, so her word was 異形, of course.) Ishibashi described this album using the same word: after seeing an exhibition of her work, he was so enraptured that he wanted to explore the same world with sound, so he produced this album on themes of creepiness and transformation.
The first four tracks are all named after specific dolls by Hayashi; they’re all generally kinda weird, darker ambient music with good synth noises and plenty of environmental noises and strange effects. The final track isn’t directly inspired by the images of the dolls themselves but is rather a more abstract attempt to consider the themes of creepiness and transformation; it’s instead a massive eleven and a half minute minimal electronica track that constantly evolves with different layers as it goes along, occasionally getting a bit weird. Fantastic music! Ishibashi rules.
Recommended tracks:
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“Caterpillar Fungus ~ Submerge” is the darkest and most corrupted track on the album, which makes sense given the inspiration
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“Otesánek ~ Dolled Call” is an alternate version of the first track of the album with more effects on it
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“Rainbow-Colored Darkness ~ 7th Key” is the journey of a final track
(track titles are unofficial translations by me)
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