Koji Asano: The Last Shade of Evening Falls Koji Asano: The Last Shade of Evening Falls (Solstice - 2000) Koji Asano has previously mined veins of seemingly-random, sprawling noisescapes, as he did in A Secret Path of Rain... Now, with the quadruple whammy of The Last Shade of Evening Falls, he's stricken a motherlode (or is that an overload?) of discordant frequencies. Each disc of the four-CD set is attractively encased in different scene of Asano's own gray through-rain-drenched-glass photography... Without prelude, 1/4 (68:02) leaps directly into its expansive, ever-twisting soundglop... feedback-like scrawls and liquified tones of metallic goo seem to swelter in a self-stirring cauldron of semi-musical energies. Highs and lows of various amorphous layers melt into each other while other streams part ways... buzzing, screeching, rippling and sometimes just glowing in a not-unpleasant ooze. Strangely hypnotic, the continually-mutating mixture evolves and entwines... like clouds reshaping in the sky, apparent tones and textures seem to materialize only to fade into obscurity again. Intriguing harmonics emerge occasionally, as do ear-bendingly torturous atonalities. The piece thins around the 50-minute mark, becoming only a few squiggly electron strands which spread into several alternating currents of accordian-esque billowing which scribble until their abrupt end. While not picking up exactly where the previous disc left off, 2/4 (60:34) immediately begins to follow similarly enigmatic aural trails, albeit more quietly... multiple threads grumble deeply and/or quaver sharply in a diffused aura of cryptic energy. About 20 minutes in, gruffly undulating tones zig-zag in erratic fashions. 25 minutes later a lightly squealing haze is being peppered with sporadic brassy bleats. Further random doodles shift suddenly then stop precisely at 60 minutes and 34 seconds. More spacious mutations await in 3/4... piano-esque notes reverberate amongst waveringly elastic sound strands. Semi-spooky extrusions seem to endlessly jitter and fibrillate in irregular frizzlies... (This disc closes on a fade out-then-resurge-then-fade-out-again conclusion, if you're curious) In a final 65-minute movement, 4/4 basks (albeit with rippling mutations) in sunset-evoking tones not unlike a cowboy's harmonica (well, alot unlike a cowboy's harmonica given the impossibly shapesifting (and practically-never-ending) textures). About 25 minutes in everything subdues, only to regain its former ebb-and-flow of caustically twitching rivulets, fading away in finality... If (for whatever reason) the idea of being ceaselessly surrounded by a fluctuating alien force-field appeals to you... these could be your CDs! Even if I feel this all is a bit much, I find myself catching waves and drifting across Koji Asano's continual, semi-turbulent seas. I'll file 4-hour-plus The Last Shade of Evening Falls under over-achieving noisecapes, and give an 8.1 for sheer experimental determination and thinking BIG... Visit Koji's new www.kojiasano.com address to see his ever-growing catalog of esoteric soundesign. This review posted January 28, 2001 AmbiEntrance © 2001-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).