Tujiko Noriko (Japan, 1976)
specialized in minimal noir ballads adrift in a glitchy low-key digital soundscape.
She debuted with
Kesho to Heitai/ Makeup and Soldiers (2000).
Shojo Toshi/ Girl City (2001) is still an amateurish work.
Electronic vignettes like the instrumentals Endless End and
Tokyo
coexist next to
ethereal chants like White Film and Porsche.
The neurotic bedroom ditty Girl Meets Boy ,
the surrealist digital collage Bebe and
the psychedelic-minimalist trip of Differencia hint at a much more sophisticated art.
In 2001 she relocated to France.
She is still anchored to the model of the French ye-ye singers of the early 1960s on the five-song EP I Forgot the Title (2002). Nonetheless, the
electronic dance-pop of Anti Newton is balanced by the
surreal electronic vignette of A's Traveling.
Hard ni Sasete/ Make Me Hard (Mego, 2002) is the album that fully revealed
her vocal and arranging skills.
It is not a coincidence that this album contains longer pieces, which are not just "songs".
The noisy and chaotic Give Face is relatively
lively and the singing sound like an African chant, whereas
Karappo/ Empty indulges in industrial rhythm and vocal tricks.
A lugubrious distorsion pervades Hae/ Fly, and enervates it bringing it
down to a requiem-like ending.
Another highlight is the anemic childish lullaby
Penguin, lulled by disorienting organ and percussion patterns.
Even more penetrating is the
the hypnotic eleven-minute guitar-driven pseudo-blues elegy Umi/ Sea (with a coda of almost techno music).
She climbs vertigo-inducing heights of trance in the
gentle cacophony
of Bikini and in
the wavering filigree of Shore Angel, both seemingly induced by
hyper-psychedelic states.
At the other end of the spectrum lie the
positively soporific Call My Name and
the extreme languor of Mugen Ressha, borderline ambient and slo-core.
From Tokyo to Naiagara (2003) simply improved her standing as an
interpreter of
fragile glitchy dance-pop (Narita Made). While that form can lead to the
tedious Rocket Hanabi as well as to the trance-pop of Mugen Kyuukou and to the trip-hop of Tokyo Tower (the standout),
she achieves much better results as a
painter of mellow dissonant abstract soundscapes in Zipper ,
in which melodic fragments of a ballad drift among electronic noise and beats.
The eight-minute Robot Hero embodies both the best and the worst of this album: it is too streamlined and repetitive but also atmospheric and dilapidated like an anti-epic slo-core dirge.
DACM was Tujiko Noriko and Pita, who made the album Stereotypie (2004). RATN was her and Riow Arai, who released J (2005).
She continued her solo career with
Blurred In My Mirror (2005),
which may lack the revolutionary impetus of her masterpiece but is nonetheless
rich in "sloppily" assembled quasi-jams.
The spoken-word litany of Niagara Hospital proceeds over haphazard beats and noir-jazzy electronica.
Switch of the Sun in You is all about the feeble psychedelic shoegazing atmosphere, while she hardly sings in it.
I'm Not Dreaming King is a disjointed jazzy elegy, and
Tennisplayer Makes a Smile
is even looser and more anarchic.
Out of these deranged takes on the song format, she concocts the
lugubrious and hypnotic trip-hop of Tablet for Memory, the
Caribbean-tinged Shayou/ Setting Sun and the
impressionistic sketch Magpies and Mornings.
Solo (2007) has little or nothing of the challenging electroacoustic
soundscapes of the past.
It opens with the catchy meowing pop muzak of Magic
and indulges in tenuous lullabies like Ending Kiss.
Even more trivial is the derivative pop aria of Gift.
The album is redeemed by the
spaced-out songs Sun and Let Me See Your Face.
The eight-minute closer, In a Chinese Restaurant,
is a litany that goes nowhere.
Trust (2008) is a remix album.
She collaborated with Aoki Takamasa on 28 (2005),
with Lawrence English and John Chantler on U (2008), with .Tyme (Tatsuya Yamada) on the dance-pop album GYU (2012),
and with
Nobukazu Takemura
on East Facing Balcony (2012).
Kaette Kita Gosuto/ My Ghost Comes Back (2014) was the first solo album after the disappointment of Solo. From the outset,
the 14-minute opener My Heart Isn't Only Mine laid out much bigger
ambitions: neoclassical chamber music enhanced with electronic effects and drowned in dreamy post-rock jamming.
Unfortunately, the inspiration does not match the ambition.
The best song is Give Me Your Hands. The rest are either
tedious (Land Next to Me, Under the White Sheets) or
trivial (Minty You, 12 Moons).
Through the Rain sounds like a remix of Burt Bacharach's Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head.
The nine-minute closer, My Ghost Comes Back, evokes a funereal procession with too much bombast.
She handles synths, beats, guitar, string instruments and optigan while employing a small chamber ensemble of mandolin, viola, music saw, koto, vibraphone, and percussion.
She turned to slow, ethereal, ambient music with
the double album Crepuscle I & II (2023).
The fragile eight-minute Fossil Words lets ethereal vocals slowly float in empty space. Even slower is the
droning cosmic music of the instrumental A Meeting At The Space Station (11:38).
Even thinner is the atmosphere of the 24-minute
Roaming Over Land, Sea And Air with ecstatic vocals that sound like Buddhist prayers.
The feeling of transcendence is even stronger in the closer
Don't Worry I'll Be Here (18:45), the one truly remarkable piece, which
sounds like coming from the otherworld, music for tombs.
She also composed the film soundtracks Kuro (2019) and Surge (2022), collaborations with Berlin-based filmmaker Joji Koyama.
