Oppressed by the Line, Kiku

There’s something fascinating to me about the ties between music and place — how a certain sound, song, or voice can immediately evoke somewhere you’ve been, something you’ve seen, and immediately pull you inexorably back to the exact moment when you first experienced it. I’d be willing to bet everyone’s got those moments; hell, movie soundtracks are essentially built around the very premise. I know I’ve got my own, like the way I can’t help but think of roaming the woods of summer camp when I hear the first Enya album, or the Irish countryside when I hear The Pogues’ version of “Waltzing Matilda,” or a dusty train station outside Tangier when I hear Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” (no, seriously).

All of which goes somewhat to explain, I think, why I’m getting into Oppressed by the Line’s Kiku EP so much. OBTL music-maker Jonathan Thompson, ex-Of Normandy, ex-The Wash, and sometimes ex-Houston, came up with the songs on the EP while visiting Japan back in 2006, so the whole thing plays like an auditory postcard/journal of the trip, music as travelogue. And as travelogues of this sort go, it’s a remarkably alluring one, marrying a lush/ethereal dreampop haze to restrained-yet-beautiful beats and synths and bringing to mind folks like Ulrich Schnauss (particularly on opener “Mountain Mist”) and M83.

The aforementioned opener, for example, starts off with nice, gamelan-sounding percussion, then shifts upwards into a beat-driven cloud of melody, while “Sunset from the 16th Floor” is shimmering and ephemeral, gorgeous and gone far, far too soon — although that’s appropriate, given the inspiration/title of the track itself. It’s electronic, yet warm and stunningly bright, with crystalline keys drifting over the top and an almost Tangerine Dream-esque harmony (and yes, that’s a compliment).

“One Thousand Red Stars,” for its part, is M83 all the way, complete with those thick, all-encompassing synth sounds; I find myself loving the calm, implacable single drum thumping along in the background. Then there’s “Shinkansen,” part of which Thompson apparently literally recorded on a bullet train across Japan; the train sounds eventually get swallowed by the solid-sounding Underworld lines Thompson slowly layers on, transforming the track into a speedy, sleek piece of robot-pop that moves along with the clean, efficient precision of (okay, never having been to Japan, I’m guessing, here) its namesake trains.

My personal favorite, though, has to be “Paper Cranes” — I can’t help but dig the steadily-building beats and vocals that sound like they’re being broadcast from inside the airlock of a space station somewhere high above the planet (complete with the cool little electronic beep that precedes Thompson’s vocal lines). Once the guitars switch on, covering the whole thing with a woolly blanket of fuzzed-out melodic noise reverently swiped from Kevin Shields, I’m fully sold. Majestic and awesome, with all the open-mouthed wonderment you should feel at discovering a new place for yourself.