Self-described as "laptop folk," on Modern,
Ogurusu Norihide continues his foray into gentle, spacious melodies and lulling repetition. Echoing the nearly blank, white cover of the album, the music on Modern is a study in the expansive emotiveness of spare composition. On the first track, Norihide uses a simple piano progression to transport the listener into his slow-motion world. Track two employs sunny acoustic guitar chords and distant, sparse, glitch-pop beats to truly live up to genre's description. The third track beautifully connects the dreamy folk of
Mojave 3 and
Neil Halstead to electronica as subtle atmospheric drones and waves shimmer across the acoustic guitar line. Norihide is a master of the experimental as well -- the fourth song on the record takes a soft, electronic moan and blissfully edits it into an exercise in minimalism and the ten minute-long sixth track is composed largely of silence. What Norihide is trying to do, along with label-mates
Greg Davis and
Takagi Masakatsu, is nothing short of forging an entirely new genre -- one that is not a giant digression from familiar musical forms, but still, a gentle, brilliant revolution. ~ Charles Spano