ZIGOKU

TRACKLIST 1. Fue 2. Shi 3. Kamaitachi 4. Wagakki Orchastra #1 5. Nakimushinatori 6. Hotokesama 7. Souzou 8. Koukai Sakini Tatazu 9. Sotoduraoni 10. Ousyou INFO Ultra-textured arrangements that radiate quiet power, locking listeners into |No a distorted landscape before evaporating without any fanfare." Resident Advisor Both reflective and rapturous...focuses on altering the DNA of traditional |No Japanese instruments and building something new from it, without losing the essence." Bandcamp Daily Acclaimed Japanese musician 99LETTERS joins Phantom Limb for new album Zigoku / ??, seamlessly processing traditional Japanese instrumentation into pitch-black techno and quasi-industrial sound design. šThis album is made with the theme of human death,› 99LETTERS (Osaka producer Takahiro Kinoshita) writes of Zigoku / ?? [Eng: hell], his first album for Phantom Limb. šEven if I eventually end up in hell when I die, it might be a more peaceful place than I had imagined. The whole album may represent the world of death that I desire.› Though the music of Zigoku / ?? is ostensibly programmed with dark, disorientating, disturbing sound design, 99LETTERS continues his now-characteristic practice of sampling, processing and disguising traditional Japanese instrumentation to develop a sound world both organic and unsettling. The very real presence of beauty, culture, and folklore remains throughout the record, in attendance as a kind of heaven to offset the willful hell of Kinoshita™s craft. Appropriately - and in his typically cryptic language - Kinoshita speaks of human interference with reality and morality as key themes of the album: šEveryone has a good and bad person within them, which can be deceived by misinformation and superstition. The bad side can be ferocious and can easily hurt people. Sometimes I think that the present age is a complicated and difficult era to live in, and that this era may be hell.›