For some reason the title of this, Kodama's only LP, sticks in my head much more than the music does. Although I always think of it as 'tuning leaf' instead of turning, a sentiment I really like. A duo of American-in-Europe Michael Northam + Japanese-in-Switzerland Hitoshi Kojo, Kodama turn the dial slightly past halfway between field recordings and electro-acoustic composition. The musique concrete elements are more than just salad dressing; they're a fundament around which the instrumental interplay congeals, and it's not virtuoso riffing but a careful colouring based around mood and timbre. There's a thick, dense atmosphere that goes throughout almost the whole LP, either the result of buzzing midrange electronics, or acoustic sounds processed into something more - it's hard to say. The numerous tracks, all with great artsy names that are much easier to cut 'n paste from discogs than to re-type ('Backing Up Into A Cultural Ditch We Slobbered Through The Din Of The Alcoholics' Babble' is my fave), blend into one big suite. At their most spacious ('Uprooting Mycelium In The Night Forest Of "Grmade" We Spoke With The Bubilant Sage' being an excellent example), Northam & Kojo bring in just enough improvised instrumentation to genuinely integrate with the field recordings; the silence slowly gets taken over but first after a variety of flutes, small percussive sounds, bells, and other objects are brought in. There's no clear divide between human/machine here; the purity of performance maybe gets lost in service to the cohesive whole, but that's OK. It's a very busy record, and given the naturalistic, pastoral elements (not just the source material but the titles and artwork as well) it's a little bit overwhelming, not a meditative field recording platter at all. That's not to say one can't lose oneself in Kodama's music; it's the very definition of psychedelic, and uncompromising in its vision as it layers up the details. The opening of the first side actually hurts my head a bit, if I have it placed right between the speakers (which is, of course, the best way to listen to music); the opening of side two is made to sound like there's some huge gob of debris being dragged across by my stylus, but it's just a trompe l'oreille.
Turning Leaf Migrations is definitely a playful record, not necessarily ha-ha funny or subterfuge-driven but awash in the potentiality of bringing sounds together. For something so carefully put together it manages to feel loose, and even the denser ringing parts feel like sketches, or at least that they feel like they have the intent of a sketch, because they move on quickly. Because the tracks all flow into two side-long pieces, it's arguable that
Turning Leaf Migrations is really just one big composition, but there's something a bit scatterbrained about it all. Towards the middle of the second side the sound shifts into a more creeping, underwater/sci-fi feel, like an outtake from a Chrome session only with all of the benefits (and great stereo processing) that the technology of the time (the mid-00s) provide. This shift in tonality either adds complexity to the overall picture or maybe it distracts from it and sounds too generic; I can't really decide. By the end though, I'm glad to have revisited this, as it moves to a hypnotic, meditative drone ('Where Even Once We Slept By The Arctic Ocean When Cloud Drops Bounced On Our Strings') that is stunningly beautiful yet still has the presence of quiet rustling and other bits and bobs, quilted together perfectly. It could close on that but instead takes another tactic entirely, a closing track which is the album's longest and brings in pulsing, yet soft electronics, more ringing and buzzing, and some discordant voices. There's nary a trace of distortion across the whole album, except for maybe the aforementioned needle fakeout on side 2; it's a clean mix that gets thick when it needs to, but doesn't go for the thunder. By the end, I'm actually tired from such active listening.
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