Bleep

Katsunori Sawa’s second cassette of 2019 is a highly original record. Indeed, such is the spirit of invention driving An Enlightenment Manual, Your Consciousness Of Truth that it makes the album a difficult one to classify. The whirligig drum programming of post-techno tracks like ‘Frozen Dirt Trace’ and ‘Strange Hell’ finds some midpoint between Surgeon, Harmonious Thelonious and Ziur, but the netherworld trance atmospherics steer closer to a Hospital Records sound. Then, just when you think you’ve got a handle on this thing, Sawa pulls the rug out from under your feet with the monolithic ambient drones ‘Underwent A Pronounced Shift Towards The Landscapes’ and ‘Hatsushimo’. When all is said and done, An Enlightenment Manual, Your Consciousness Of Truth might just be a record that lives up to its title.