Windswept Adan

Windswept Adan (Japanese: アダンの風, Hepburn: Adan no Kaze) is the seventh studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter Ichiko Aoba, released on 2 December 2020 by her label, Hermine. Conceived as a soundtrack for an imaginary film based on a narrative written by Aoba, the concept album follows the story of a young girl who is sent away by her family to the titular fictional island of Adan. Aoba and composer Taro Umebayashi wrote, composed, arranged, and produced the music for the album throughout 2020. Initial development began in January, while recording and mastering sessions were held from July to October. The album was preceded by one single, "Porcelain", which was released on 30 October 2020.
Windswept Adan is a chamber folk and psychedelic folk album with elements of jazz, classical, and ambient music. It marks a departure from Aoba's earlier minimalist instrumentation, drawing inspiration from diverse music traditions and featuring a variety of instruments and sounds, including a celesta, wind chimes, string arrangements, and field recordings taken by Aoba during her trips to the Ryukyu Islands. The album includes instrumental, a cappella, and vocal performances, some of which contain only non-lyrical vocalizations.
Windswept Adan received widespread critical acclaim, with praise for its arrangements, instrumentation, and worldbuilding. Upon its release, the album debuted at number 82 on the Billboard Japan Hot Albums chart and number 88 on the Oricon Albums Chart. It was promoted in Japan with concerts and alternate versions, including a live album and a three-track single with acoustic renditions of selected songs. It received an international vinyl release on 19 November 2021, the first time one of Aoba's albums was reissued outside of Japan. To further support the album in global markets, Aoba embarked on her first international tour, performing in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and North America between August and October 2022.
After the release of her debut album Kamisori Otome (剃刀乙女) in 2010, Ichiko Aoba had built an audience in her native Japan, but her work remained obscure abroad. However, following the release of her sixth studio album, Qp, in 2018, Aoba began drawing attention from international listeners and media outlets. Qp was received positively by both critics and listeners outside of Japan; it was called a "masterclass" and "beautifully restless" by Sputnikmusic's JohnnyoftheWell and was ranked among the top albums of 2018 on the online music community Rate Your Music. The album's popularity brought new listeners to Aoba's previous releases, leading her 2013 album 0 to be retroactively ranked as the top album of its year on Rate Your Music. On 10 January 2020, Aoba announced the establishment of her record label, Hermine, alongside the release of two songs titled "Amuletum" (守り哥, Mamori Uta, lit. 'Guardian Song') and "Bouquet" as a double A-side single.
Aoba first conceptualized Windswept Adan as a story while on a trip to the islands of Okinawa, Zamami, and Kudaka with photographer Kodai Kobayashi in January 2020. The title originated from a conversation between Aoba and Kobayashi during a drive on Zamami, in which Kobayashi noted the Pandanus tectorius trees on the island. Aoba stated that the story for the album came to her in an epiphany she had at an izakaya in Naha; after noticing the translucency of a sea grape, she wrote the sentence "there were no words on the island" in her notebook, and soon began outlining a plot. Between March and September 2020, Aoba made several subsequent trips to the Ryukyu Islands, visiting Amami Ōshima, Kakeroma, and Ishigaki. She researched various aspects of Ryukyuan culture and history, including festivals held on remote islands; the noro and yuta figures of Ryukyuan religion; the region's geography, demographics, weather, and marine life; and the topics of plant breeding and plankton. Aoba completed the final draft for the story of Windswept Adan in October 2020, during the album's mastering stage. A companion book containing Aoba's writings, sketches, and photographs was released to supplement the album.
The narrative follows a young girl with prophetic powers from a village of inbred families on the fictional remote island of Kirinaki, who is exiled by her family to the island Adan to preserve her bloodline while preventing her from participating in intermarriage. Aoba depicts the imaginary Adan as flourishing with diverse plant and animal life (such as Risso's dolphins, bougainvillea, and Easter lilies) and inhabited by creatures of an unspecified species that communicate using seashells in place of a spoken language. The creatures of Adan celebrate the girl's arrival with a festival, and soon after die due to their brief lifespans. After falling asleep under a tree and awakening to a group of creatures rising into the air, the girl also dies and is reincarnated as a number of different life forms.
All of the lyrics on Windswept Adan were written by Aoba, while composition, arrangement, and production were largely handled by Aoba and composer Taro Umebayashi, with whom she had previously collaborated on "Amuletum". According to Aoba, the album began development during her first trip to Okinawa in January 2020; a snippet of the track "Pilgrimage" was the first demo that she received from Umebayashi. Recording sessions began in July, and the final mastering stage ended in mid-October. Aoba described the production process as unconventional, with composing, recording, and mixing being done concurrently rather than sequentially. She likened the experience to working on a ship:
Contrary to Aoba's earlier works, which had been characterized by their minimalist guitar and vocal arrangements, Windswept Adan features an array of different instruments, including woodwind, keyboard, and string instruments. Aoba and Umebayashi enlisted the help of several musicians, including flautist Junichiro Taku [ja], percussionist Manami Kakudo, and the string quintet Phonolite Strings, for accompaniment on the album. Windswept Adan also contains samples of field recordings taken by Aoba at various locations around Amami Ōshima.
While composing for Windswept Adan, Umebayashi worked closely with Aoba as she wrote her story. He recorded demos inspired by Aoba's ideas, which she periodically shared with him as the plot developed; the demos would then shape the direction of Aoba's subsequent writing. Umebayashi sought to reflect the mythological themes and the setting of Aoba's narrative in the sound of the album, as well as create an intentionally vague impression of the music's cultural origin. On the song "Easter Lily", he plays the celesta, an instrument he believed suited Aoba's vocals and the atmosphere of the story; a prepared piano with a felt covering was featured in the recording of "Parfum d'étoiles" for the same reason. For the song "Pilgrimage", he used the charango, a lute-like instrument traditionally used in South America, to create a foreign feeling for the track. According to Umebayashi, the song "Porcelain" includes a single electric guitar in order to "incorporate the idea of expressing color"; during its production, he examined photos that Kobayashi had sent to him and contemplated which sounds best matched the colors in the images. He also consulted Aoba to determine how the instruments should be played on the track and focused on ensuring that its dynamic level was appropriate for her vocals. Both Umebayashi and Aoba have said that they were inspired by musical traditions and cultures from around the world while writing and composing for Windswept Adan, adapting scales from Ryukyuan music and experimenting with sounds from shima-uta and Bulgarian folk music, particularly the style of the Bulgarian Voices.
Windswept Adan is a concept album inspired by Aoba's narrative; she has described it as the soundtrack to a fictional film. Critics have generally labeled the album as chamber folk and psychedelic folk, but some have also described it as including elements from jazz, classical, and ambient music. Some reviewers have stated that Windswept Adan represents a stylistic departure from the minimalist instrumentation featured on Aoba's earlier projects, such as Qp. Its atmosphere has often been called "ghostly" and "serene".
Critics have made comparisons between Windswept Adan and the works of artists across various musical genres, ranging from art pop to contemporary classical. The album's composition has commonly been analogized to those by composers Erik Satie and Philip Glass. David Honigmann of the Financial Times deemed it a successor to Akiko Yano's 1982 album Ai Ga Nakucha Ne (愛がなくちゃね, You've Got to Have Love, You Know) and likened the songs "Horo" and "Ohayashi" to the works of Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Steve Reich, respectively. The Observer's Emily Mackay noted similarities to the music of Nick Drake, Joanna Newsom, and Isobel Campbell's The Gentle Waves project. Brendan Mattox of Bandcamp Daily compared the album's arrangements to Mark Mothersbaugh's scores for the films of Wes Anderson and the works of composer Jherek Bischoff. Other artists whose works have been compared to Windswept Adan include Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Astrud Gilberto, and Kate Bush.
The opening song "Prologue" features an organ, choral vocals, wind chimes, and samples from a field recording of waves crashing taken by Aoba on Honohoshi Beach in Amami Ōshima. Honigmann described the track as "a lazy, persistent wash of surf, tiny bells, [and] a speechless vocal that could be the voice of a breeze." The song "Pilgrimage" consists of Aoba vocalizing in an invented language over a repeated harp melody, arpeggiated flutes, and a charango. Stephen Dalton of Uncut likened its sound to that of a music box. Inspired by the concept of musically depicting the weather of the Kerama Islands, the single "Porcelain" is considered one of the densest tracks on Windswept Adan, and features orchestral arrangements of strings, woodwinds, and percussion and lyrics about the landscape of Adan. Honigmann compared it to the orientalist arrangements of Maurice Ravel, while Pitchfork's Shy Thompson described its composition as consisting of softer individual parts that coalesce into "a tumultuous storm." The song "Horo" (帆衣, Hoi, lit. 'Sail Clothing') includes improvised vocals accompanied by an accordion; Mattox compared Aoba's singing on the track to birdsong. "Easter Lily", named after the flower native to the Ryukyu Islands, contains two layered vocal melodies sung alongside a celesta and guitar. Honigmann characterized Aoba's backing vocal performance on "Easter Lily" as a mumbled haiku.
"Parfum d'étoiles" features Aoba quietly vocalizing over a prepared piano played by Umebayashi. A field recording of the calls of Amami jays taken by Aoba at a church in Tatsugō, Kagoshima, can be heard in the background. Thompson described "Parfum d'étoiles" as "an almost improvised sounding piano number", and observed that the sound of the piano's hammers striking its strings could be heard with each keystroke. Honigmann noted similarities between Umebayashi's arrangement and the works of Erik Satie, and characterized the song's piano performance as "moody [and] unresolved". "Kirinakijima" (霧鳴島, Kirinaki Island) is an a cappella song with two vocal harmonies layered over each other, and is titled after the home island of the story's protagonist. "Sagu Palm's Song" is about the titular Japanese sago palm and contains minimal instrumentation, featuring only Aoba's vocals and a guitalele. Thompson highlighted the shift in composition relative to the preceding songs, commenting that Aoba sounded particularly isolated on the track.
The ambient track "Chinuhaji" functions as an interlude to the following "Red Silence" (血の風, Chi no Kaze, lit. 'Wind of Blood'). The lyrics of "Red Silence" are an adaptation of a healing spell found in the 1925 book Shima no Hanashi (シマの話, Island Stories) by Okinawan folklorist Koei Sakima [ja] and are sung in Okinawan Japanese. Aoba incorporated the words of the spell into the song's lyrics, hoping that they would resonate with listeners in modern times. Dalton called "Red Silence" a "breathy, pared-down, late-night jazzy chanson" alongside "Hagupit" (Tagalog for "repeated whipping"), which shares its name with the typhoon of the same name that Aoba experienced during her visit to the Yaeyama Islands in August 2020. "Hagupit" features Aoba singing with accompaniment from the string quintet Phonolite Strings; Mackay called it "an eerier, ghostlier thing with a keening melody." The song "Dawn in the Adan" contains performances from Junichiro Taku and Phonolite Strings; its lyrics are inspired by the continuity of life from the distant past, Aoba's reflections on the origins of sadness and pain, and the concept of a singular, encompassing life force. "Ohayashi" is characterized by abrupt shifts and gamelan-style percussion performed by Manami Kakudo and employs polyrhythmic techniques—the song's guitar riff is written in quintuple meter. The six-minute closing track "Luminescent Creatures" (アダンの島の誕生祭, Adan no Shima no Tanjōsai, lit. 'Birth Festival of Adan Island') begins with Aoba singing over a lightly-strummed guitar and gradually builds into an orchestral piece with cello and flute before fading into the sound of waves on the shore. The literal title of the song, "Birth Festival of Adan Island", is intended to symbolize the idea of rebirth. Loud and Quiet's Charlotte Marston described the song as "long, still beats filling in the gaps between creamy flecks of guitar and velveteen vocals." Mattox commented that Aoba's singing on the track conveyed the fragility of the story's young protagonist.
On 30 October 2020, Aoba announced that she would release Windswept Adan in December. She debuted the album's only single, "Porcelain", along with an accompanying music video directed by Kodai Kobayashi, on the same day. Even though Aoba had previously received international media coverage for her 2018 album Qp, the release of "Porcelain" was viewed as her first intentional effort to appeal to global audiences, with Beats Per Minute's Rob Hakimian noting its English-language title and the inclusion of an image of Aoba on the single's cover art. Windswept Adan was released for streaming and digital download by Aoba's record label, Hermine, on 2 December 2020. Upon its release, the album debuted at number 82 on the Billboard Japan Hot Albums chart, where it remained for a week, and at number 88 on the Oricon Albums Chart, where it remained for two weeks.
In Japan, Windswept Adan was promoted with concerts, events, and re-recordings. On the day of its release, Aoba performed the album via livestream from the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Shinagawa, Tokyo. She announced that an exhibition featuring her sketches, writings, voice memos, and seashell instruments used for the album would be held at Tsutaya Books Daikanyama in Shibuya, Tokyo, from 4 December to 27 December 2020. She later announced that another livestream performance would be held at Tsutaya Books on 29 January 2021. On 16 June 2021, a three-track single titled "Windswept Adan Roots" was released, featuring re-recorded acoustic versions of "Easter Lily", "Porcelain", and "Dawn in the Adan". On 21 June, Aoba, Umebayashi, and other musicians featured on Windswept Adan performed an orchestral arrangement of the album, along with arrangements of "Amuletum" and "Seabed Eden" (海底のエデン, Kaitei no Eden), at a commemorative concert at the Bunkamura Orchard Hall in Shibuya; the event was hosted for a live audience and broadcast online. Double 12-inch vinyl sets of Windswept Adan were made available for purchase in Japan on 7 July 2021; following the reissue, the album made another appearance on Japanese charts, reaching its peak on the Oricon Albums Chart at number 63 and the Billboard Japan Top Album Sales chart at number 43 with an estimated 1,905 total copies sold. A live recording of the Bunkamura concert titled "Windswept Adan" Concert at Bunkamura Orchard Hall (Live) was released on 18 August 2021.
The front cover features a photograph taken by Kodai Kobayashi, which depicts Aoba swimming nude underwater. Seika Yajima of An An described the cover as evoking "the mystery and dynamism of life". The photograph was taken in the waters surrounding Ishigaki Island in the Yaeyama Islands during the production of "Choe", a serialized photo essay about Aoba's time in the Ryukyu Islands that was featured in the Japanese magazine &Premium [ja]. Kobayashi had previously taken the photographs for the cover art and booklet of the 2018 extended play "Karakai to Amaneki" by Aoba and producer Sweet William; he later served as the primary photographer and art director for Windswept Adan.
On 19 November 2021, Ba Da Bing Records released vinyl copies of Windswept Adan in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, nearly a year after its initial launch. The release marked the first time that any of Aoba's albums were reissued internationally. In June 2022, Aoba announced her first international tour in support of the album, with planned shows in Europe and North America. The tour commenced with its European leg on 20 August with a performance at the Green Man Festival in Wales. Aoba played subsequent shows in cities across the United Kingdom and continental Europe, including Glasgow, London, Copenhagen, Munich, and Berlin. The leg concluded with a concert in Stuttgart on 11 September. The North American leg of the tour began at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles on 14 October and ended with a show in Philadelphia on 28 October.
Windswept Adan was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 82, based on 6 reviews.
Several reviewers praised the worldbuilding and atmosphere of Windswept Adan. Beats Per Minute's chief editor Chase McMullen considered it to be her most ambitious effort yet, describing the album as "an aquatic world to be lost within" and citing the songs "Parfum d'étoiles", "Kirinakijima", and "Chinuhaji" as contributors to the album's ethereal feeling. Financial Times' David Honigmann commended its narrative and highlighted "Easter Lily" as the point at which the album's elements came together most effectively. Emily Mackay of The Observer lauded Aoba's storytelling and complimented the gentle compositions of "Prologue" and "Luminescent Creatures", while Mojo's Andy Cowan said that Aoba's performances and orchestration on the album made for an immersive and calming listening experience.
Critics also underscored the album's production and stylistic range, with many framing it in relation to Aoba's past works. For Sputnikmusic, JohnnyoftheWell applauded the production on Windswept Adan as cohesive and polished, and remarked that the album offers a fresh and unique listening experience despite differing sonically from Aoba's earlier releases. However, they criticized Umebayashi's arrangement on the single "Porcelain" as lackluster and tedious. In a review for Pitchfork, Shy Thompson wrote that on the album, Aoba had embraced a wide range of sounds while retaining the sentimental and imaginative qualities that had defined her previous works. Loud and Quiet's Charlotte Marston welcomed the album's change of pace, commenting that its diverse instrumentation gave it more complexity than the rest of Aoba's discography and highlighted the first three tracks, "Prologue", "Pilgrimage", and "Porcelain", as indicative of a transition in her musical style. In Uncut, Stephen Dalton appraised it as exceptionally well-crafted and wrote that its blend of nostalgic influences with modern ambient sounds was executed smoothly. The Guardian writer John Lewis said that on Windswept Adan, Aoba was able to emulate the style of other artists while remaining distinct in her creative approach.
Windswept Adan was featured on Beats Per Minute's list of the top 50 albums of 2020, ranking at number 18. The album was ranked fifth on The Guardian's list of the top 10 best contemporary albums of 2021.
All lyrics are written by Ichiko Aoba. All songs on the original release are produced by Aoba and Taro Umebayashi. All songs on the "Roots" edition are covers performed by Aoba. All arrangements for the live edition of Windswept Adan are by Umebayashi.
Notes
Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Windswept Adan.
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