Sakura Tsuruta: GEMZ (all my thoughts)
I'm always blinged up. Diamonds on my fingers, amethyst on my toes, opals in my ear-holes. I never leave the house unless I'm jangling like a thousand windchimes in a hurricane. Which is good. Because the next album in my 2024 countdown is inspired by precious stones.
The blurb says Sakura Tsuruta's album cannels the "radiant light and vibrant colours" of precious metals. That promo waffle is indeed correct, for a change. The music's gleaming polygons of sound could only have been crafted through some mystic light-to-audio alchemy. It's enchanting.
Onyx coalesces into a complex techno roller with a kaleidoscope of light-touch percussion. The donking brashness of Push & Pull sounds like someone mining into a rock face with a tiny hammer. Violet Sun is dramatic and moody, with a thicker bass beat, and then Obsidian comes along with its clattering junglist rhythms and smashes everything to pieces.
Sakura Tsuruta's work is as smoothly animated as Detroit techno, as flowing as ambient dub, as geometric as early rave, and yet it is none of those things. A refreshing record that somehow has pinged towards the top of my annual list. Shiny.
I'm amazed I was able to type any of this, what with all the rubies on my fingers. Dozens of them, I've got. On each finger. I have very heavy hands.
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