Warped Lucky by antennasia

Japanese electronic duo antennasia's eighth album, "Warped Lucky," is a joint release between their own label, Double Life Records, and up-and-coming San Francisco based electronic label, Tabula Rasa Records. Nerve has recently been creating solo drone ambient works under the name NRV, which were first released on Tabula Rasa Records.

antennasia was formed in Tokyo in 1999 by san, an expressive artist with an exceptional voice, and a track-maker Nerve.
It is difficult to describe the music of this duo. Triphop? Electronica? Synth-pop? Dub? Perhaps none of those are wrong, but this capricious duo has produced a body of work that seems to incorporate those sounds while simultaneously looking in other directions, and also throwing in a variety of styles even in a single album.

The album opens with "Gone Angels," a song with Motown-esque bassline on the one-drop rhythm and floating synth pad with subtle noise. Free-falling through the air, "I" mutters to her musical heroes like Lee “Scratch” Perry, John Lennon, Curtis Mayfield, David Bowie, Holger Czukay and Klaus Nomi, "These are strange times. Even the sun doesn’t look right”.

Throughout the album, san's vocals play a diverse role as both a lead instrument with a variety of expressions and as a major component of antennasia's music, serving as chorus, synth pad, strings, sampling source, and more.

The first track is taken over to “Upon My Pillow," featuring a slurred beat, fragments of folk instruments, nostalgic strings, and even clucking chickens. Someone small dances on a pillow, smiling like a crescent moon and sings, “When the morning comes, you will be gone. When a rooster crows, you’ll be alone”. san's voice changes as she sings the surrealistic blues-like lyrics giving the song deeper shades.

San has also produced three tracks for this project. These tracks are different in tone, but all of them are like little symphonies, with scenes unfolding one after the other.
"Humming on the Moon" depicts a live stage on the moon, with dub-like sound effects that evoke a state of weightlessness. The sung melody is quickly sucked into the vacuum, and no one hears the humming, but the stage, with moon creatures and stars as the audience, proceeds gleefully with electronic funk beat.
"Κάστρο της άμμου" is a fusion of an old-style piano piece and electronics, accompanied by traditional and classical elements. In the latter half of the piece, the atmosphere changes to one of serenity with the sound of crumbling sand, and san delivers her vocals with subtle emotion, incorporating narratives and whispers.
In "The March for the Horizon," a dark synth-pop with a theatrical texture, san sings a dramatic and expressive monologue as a ship that loses its crew, sail, and map in a rolling fire storm. The three most original songs on the album are the ones that cannot be categorized within any existing genre. They are at once avant-garde, pop, and partly dance music.

"Warped Lucky" was originally started as a "dark album," and its initial conceptual atmosphere can be seen on a fusion of trip-hop, Bristol sounds and dark ambient on "Winter Sleeper and “Kingyo wo sukui, Anata wo sukui," which has an industrial-sounding chorus that resembles exploding fireworks. Both of these songs are in a style that has not been seen in recent years on antennasia works.

The album also includes "Doppelstrom," a rare instrumental number for antennasia. This track, with Ambient and Caribbean mood at the same time, is impressive for its melodica, which sounds like the wind blowing high in the sky, as san improvises.

The final track, "Feeling Like a River," utilizes ambient composition techniques learned through Nerve’s works as NRV, but this track, produced as antennasia, is simpler but more dramatic, with emotionally rich vocals that color the song and give it a deeper life.

At the end of "Gone Angels," "I" feels another gravity from above and a discreet harmony filled with love, and realizes herself as one floating feather. In the same way, the duo will continue to make something that is not bound anywhere, blown by the wind, by chance, or by warped lucky.

antennasia is a Japan-based triphop/electronica/dub/avant-pop group by san and nerve.

The long-awaited album "Warped Lucky" is released in July 2023 from Tabula Rasa Records in San Francisco and Double Life Records.

antennasia.com