- Akiko Kiyama has made the weirdest music of her career during the past two years. From 2004 till 2015, her EPs and LPs surfaced on the sort of labels—Contexterrior, Lick My Deck, District Of Corruption—and mixes—most notably Richie Hawtin's DE9 | Transitions—you'd expect of a solid minimal techno producer. It's much harder to describe what Kiyama, as Aalko, is doing on No Man Is An Island. A three-track sampler from an album of the same name, the EP follows a series of experimental records on Kebko Music, the label Kiyama set up two years ago, where oddball composition has reigned, most notably on her excellent 2015 LP, Ophelia.
"Body & Soul"'s drum track is slashed in vandalising strokes by toms, flatulent synths, squeezed latex and anything else that will halt the rhythm. (A tongue-in-cheek bass guitar lick is the track's only constant.) "Mixture" is similarly unsettled. The breakbeats are thinly sliced, and often cut out suddenly. The percussion, a mix of live drum sounds and machine-derived claps and hats, is arranged in disjunctive, overlapping patterns. "Mixture"s disorderly vibe is brought out by a digital slide whistle, which is both funny and annoying. If these arrhythmic stretches have limited appeal for fans of her old stuff, then the dub techno of "B.I.C." is a fine reminder of Kiyama's dance floor pedigree.
TracklistA1 Body & Soul
A2 Mixture
B1 B.I.C.