Contrahouse 日本 by Contrahouse

In ULYSSA’s CONTRAHOUSE are many mansions. And we’re calling room to room, seeing who’s still awake. Mind if we come up? Yes, The Great Global Game of Telephone goes on for our dear CONTRAHOUSE. We’ve put in a collect call to Japan, banging the lines of a handful of our favorite contemporary Japanese musicians: House icon Shinichiro Yokota; Sultry, sensual experimentalist wizard Ryu Tsuruoka; Playful melodica virtuoso hyper-popper Yunovation; and glitch-pop maestro and avant-garde legend Shuta Hasunuma, without whose 2009 masterpiece POP OOGA Ulyssa might not even exist. That’s not hyperbole, friends. POP OOGA is a foundational piece of ULYSSA lore. These four have each had their way with a gem from CONTRAHOUSE, sending us down heretofore unknown corridors. In fact, this next pitch-black hallway isn’t a hallway at all. It’s a diving board. We jackknife right off and SPLOOSH down through the hole in an inflatable swan.

More than a mere remix package, CONTRAHOUSE 日本 is something more like a sense memory dream of CONTRAHOUSE. It’s pulled from the furnace and blown like glass into a just-beyond-familiar shape. Alice Through the 2-Way Mirror. Yokota’s all-gas-no-breaks “Bigutaimusenshuariti 2’ comes on as straight-up house banger. But with each passing phrase, Yokota’s famous, surgically precise piano stabs (dancing with Hornsby’s original ivory tickles) turn hypersurreal — echoing the winking namesake of the original CONTRAHOUSE track, Björk’s 1993 hit, more than the CONTRAHOUSE opener itself. And that’s just about when the whole affair is sent fully into Dreamland. We’re cast into Tsuruoka’s 3 AM out-of-body tresillo “Kurage,” complete with an inspired synthetic jellyfish-vs.-snakecharmer climax. Then, Yunovation’s naiadic melodica weaving like streams through the rolling hills of “Amerikanbotomuso.” Shuta Hasunuma’s “Sutorītokōn” is one of those revolving door-type dreams. The kind wherein you keep turning the same corner, reaching for that same yellow phone. Each time it’s the same but just-ever-so warped. The phone is a different color; the voice on the other end slightly pitch-shifted. Repeating your own words back but in a sort of pre-language. It’s maddening and glorious. Every now and again, you have to remind yourself of your name and that you’re still in the CONTRAHOUSE. That everything here has its double — which means your double has a double. It’s happening again. You’ve got simulacrum in your hair and your USB stick is hanging out. No worries, friend. No judgement here in the CONTRAHOUSE. Here’s a headlamp. Keep exploring these corridors. To CONTRAHOUSE, to sleep — to sleep, perchance to dream — ay, there’s the rub, for in this sleep of CONTRAHOUSE what dreams may come. CONTRAHOUSE 日本 is now your home away from home.

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