A recent release reviewed

RAINSTICK ORCHESTRA
The Floating Glass Key in the Sky Ninja Tune
***

If minimalist electronic ambience is what gets you going "give it to me baby right now", Tokyo doodlers Baku Tsunoda and Naomichi Tanaka's début album should be top of your shopping list this week. Seven tracks that playfully coo and shyly whisper their way from one shady shelter to another, The Floating Glass Key in the Sky contains some of the most delicately tailored music ever carefully placed on a CD. As soundtracks for unreleased films go, this one would score those scenes where the main characters stare pensively out windows at the sky. There are certainly echoes of Steve Reich and John Cage to its wispy progression but, for all the sweet fragility, soft spiralling soundscapes and gentle instrumentation, there is something a little fatuous and clinical about the extreme gorgeousness of the whole thing. www.ninjatune.net

Jim Carroll