Maro Kariya
January 31, 2024
Microtones is pleased to announce its first full length release from Maro Kariya, aka Otodojo. The Sound of Stone was inspired by freezing landscapes coupled with Kariya's feeling of dread from dystopian visions of war and a warming climate.
The album begins with the cinematic "Galena Virgae", a sonic story about galena, an important mineral for the auto industry in the form of lead sulfide for batteries. The mineral covers mountains of Venus as snow, and Kariya imagines it in the planet’s atmosphere mixed with sulfuric acid as virgae. Galena's crystals exhibit beautiful octahedral forms and have been used for millennia as an eye cosmetic to reduce sun glare as well as an insect repellent. Despite its beauty and utility, galena has been a bane to many, including those in parts of Detroit, due to its toxicity. This conflict of galena as both the source of automotive movement (and subsequently techno) and as a poison to the people who are subjected to it is conveyed in the track’s contrasting elements; like delicate high desert pebble and plant glitches peppering heavy war-like drums and dissonant bowl progressions.
We are then immersed in the snow-laden rocky shores of The Sound of Stone which serve as a place of reflection for Kariya's experience in the Tohoku Daishinsai, with organic instrumentation, a textural poem, and vocal layering inspired by the late Ryan Karazija of Low Roar.
Temperatures drop to the glacial pace of Hyouzan with an icy generative composition. The polar intermission gives us a short window to prepare for Toketa Kaiyou, or Melted Ocean, which sucks us into the depths of Kariya's tryptan-induced paranoia of possible futures. These dystopian visions become HD within Another World, as we pass through a fiery hellscape with heavy industrial synths and spellbinding lyrics from the poet Matsunaga Teitoku (1633), accounting the sky's appearance during the New Year of the Tiger sometime in the Edo period.
The album concludes with Kariya’s wish for a positive aftermath to these dystopian visions through "Sea of Change”, followed by a soulful reinterpretation of The Sound of Stone by Omar Ahmad and a driving dance floor remix of Galena Virgae by Erik Luebs.
The cover photo was taken on a decreasingly rare occurrence when the temperatures shifted drastically, causing the recently drenched rocks to become frost-laden with a strange phase of ice.
The album release is February 1, 2024
credits:
Written by Maro J. Kariya
Mastered by Russell E.L. Butler
Music Videography & Cover Art Guidance by Kristi Gogos & Jacob Mroczek.
Remixes by Omar Ahmad and Erik Luebs
Lyrics in Another World from Matsunaga Teitoku
An album release event is scheduled for February 2, 2024 at Periodicals:
