Album Review: Fakear - Asakura EP

Exactly one year ago, I've started writing for this amazing place that is Stereofox with an album review. Now, some 80-ish posts later, I'm still writing an album review - covering one of the artists I have probably seen the most often live this year.

You may recognize Fakear's name from Sauvage album review or from a festival line-up billboard. Today, he is back with the release of a 4-track EP, Asakura through Nowadays Records. Mostly composed abroad, the title is an obvious reference to his EP Morning in Japan - with which he got known three years ago. If Morning in Japan songs were reminiscent of a certain image of Japan, none of them had been created outside France. Here, the first two tracks "Asakura" and "Ueno" have been composed in Tokyo's eponymous districts.

"Asakura" opens the EP on piano notes, soon joined by future-bass beats and soulful vocals. The track is frenzied, dynamic and colorful - as Tokyo can be at night. It's a 4-minute wandering between gaudy neon-lighted skyscrapers, and moments of rest in the shadow of a back alley.

All this wandering leads us to a Japanese garden, where we would sit under a cherry-blossom Sakura. "Ueno" would be the soundtrack to our midnight moment. Violin and erhu notes would stir up our awaken dreams and drift them towards Mount Fuji lines or even furthur accross the Pacific Ocean to the "Skyline"...

"Skyline" is the climax of Asakura. This third track has been born in Brooklyn, NYC, as Fakear was watching the skyline. From a megalopolis to another, let's experience the New Yorker nightlife. Steel-drums, bells and Bonobo-infused sounds - that's the recipe to unveil the wilderness of any urban dweller.

But then the closing track "Venus" comes to settle the Asakura trip. I had an instant crush on this one - maybe because it sounds like a familiar lullaby. The song has indeed been played live several times without ever been recorded before. Well, I'm glad it's finally done.

In the course of the four times I saw Fakear live, I have always been surprised by his energy on stage and his sincerity. Now I'm quite curious to discover how the new tracks would sound with the live band...