Bitter Sweet is neither a step forward nor back from the jangled joy and languid, melodic sweep of breathtaking sonority of Sawako's splendid Madoromi (or Hum, released on 12K some few years earlier, for that matter). It revolves on a different axis almost entirely. The fullness and depth that was such an integral part of her previous material has been condensed into a more minimalist and linear sound.
Rather than snaking flourishes and distant harmonic patterns, there is a honed unity of gesture, immediacy, and commitment to the present tense. Sawako's sound flows and shimmers like liquid, with iridescent shapes that splinter the space with ever escalating degrees of subtlety, bending and drawing attention to conventional pulse based time. She funnels full-frequency layered drones into a lengthy sonic river, bejewelled with elemental sounds of the natural world, acting as subliminal sounds that nonetheless influence whatever transpires within their proximity, and a pinched melody that sparkles overtop, like watching a blossom carried on a swift breeze.
This method remains married to an intuitive, almost diarist-style documentation. In a meditative and meticulous movement along a horizontal plain, marked by drones that are ever changing, and multiple frequencies that interact through the vertical laminates, revealing a microtonal world rich in gesture and incident, a simple awe still colors the proceedings. Thus one dialogue corrals into another, one of rich, spontaneous structures, all uncannily prescient. Put differently, one might say Sawako is more of a conceptualist rather than a theorist, intervening with intentions, but still letting the sounds move, still letting them remain elsewhere and develop their own sense of wonderment. One finds this in "Utouto", in its carpet woven from sparse, precise tones swirled through ring modulation, which hides contrastingly warm organic qualities - here from Lila Skiar and Jess Ivry on violin and cello; in other pieces from Jacob Kirkegaard on cello and Radiosonde and Ryan Francesconi on guitar - like brittle shards of glass in between its threads. Just as a mixture of water and ink cannot be redivided into distinct liquids, in Bitter Sweet, something of a new stone along Sawako's pathway, two styles - past and present - become something else, and oftentimes glow with the allure of something that has ascended its basic forms.
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