There is something quite ultimate about Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi and the music she makes as Cuushe. Like Taffy, she’s come up with a honed, focused take on her specialist genre, as though she’s been studying it for years and has now perfected it. This is perhaps why the responses to it so far have been so over-the-top – ironic given the calm, still nature of the performances – from bloggers eager to conjure new ways to capture sepulchral rapture, blown away by the diaphanous dreaminess of it all. Dreaminess and dreams are key to Cuushe. Her new EP is entitled Girl You Know That I Am Here But the Dream and it is a virtual concept record about the dream state and what happens when we sleep. Titles include Do You Know the Way to Sleep, Summer Night Sketch, I Dreamt About Silence, 9125 Days of Sleep Waves and Dust of Dreams. The tracks have been produced and remixed by a variety of artists from the aforementioned Holter, who knows a thing or two about how to communicate the creepy tranquillity of silence, to other favourites of this column such as Teen Daze, whose work confirms the profound and far-reaching influence of the 4AD label in general and Cocteau Twins in particular, but also of the succinct snappiness of 80s synthpop. [Source]
