Naotko has posted a seven-minute improvisation that wanders through echoey spaces. It’s longer than it seems, because despite its length it moves through a variety of stages, and yet the procedure never seems rushed. There are water drops and rattling metal, quavering drones and sudden silences. If there’s a constant, it’s the ambience of a field recording, the constant presence of tiny sonic variances that suggest a real-time experience. Of course, there’s nothing real here; it’s a fantasy, an aural one. The track, titled simply “E2,” is like minimal techno minus the techno, all the place-setting, all the scenic portent, yet lacking the beat. When a hard rhythm does appear, it’s little more than a tease — a beat arrives, and then is quickly quelled, the hard arrival dispensed within a split second. Some dub follows — not so much a beat as the delayed reverberation of a beat — but impression has been made: the beat, such as it is, is just one element among many. The track was posted to a sub-account of Naoyuki Sasanami, a graphic designer and prolific musician based in Tokyo.
Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/naotko-686248380](https://soundcloud.com/naotko-686248380/e2-1). More from Naoyuki Sasanami at [soundcloud.com/naotko](https://soundcloud.com/naotko), [naoyukisasanami.bandcamp.com](https://naoyukisasanami.bandcamp.com/), and [twitter.com/naotko](https://twitter.com/naotko).
Stunning