As I sit fifty feet away from the Japanese folk singer and musician Ichiko Aoba in Denver’s Paramount Theatre, my eyes close and I listen to the Luminescent Creatures circle above my head. What is it in her voice, guitar picking, and melodic whistling that has the ability to create an ocean in the middle of the Mile-High City?
No doubt, the soaring ceiling above a hundred entranced heads could mimic the cavernous air of the deep ocean. The moment that Aoba sat, a guitar nestled comfortably in her lap, an expectant silence washed over the crowd so that a whisper, a shift in one’s chair, or the opening of a water bottle pricked my ears every so often. Yet these noises remained inconsequential as her fingers began to graze the metal strings of her guitar. The beginning of the performance was a mere preparation of the spell-bounding sounds we would later fall into, eternal echoes of her music warning us how deep we really were. Despite our seated, silent audience, energy built through the rows. The escalating energy was earnest, entranced, and awed. I thought I could hear every emotion, every smile, every tear in the theater, as if each one, however minuscule, was connected to each other. For a concert, it was unfamiliar to me, for sure–the lack of heaving, sweaty bodies and blaring instrumentals that numbed eardrums– but this different energy was energy still. I can only describe these first few minutes as an introduction to a secret ecosystem that, beneath miles of raging salty waves, quietly possessed a color of its own.
Luminescent Creatures, released in totality on February 28, 2025, got its name from the last track of Aoba’s preceding album, Windswept Adan, which was released five years prior. In collaboration with pianist and composer Taro Umebayashi, Aoba wrote Windswept Adan as a “soundtrack for a fictitious film.” Further details about the film’s plot can be found in the album’s accompanying book “Dreams and Visions.” As her first album I encountered, I had no clue about its narrative arc, but from the first song titled “Prologue,” along with the whispered prose, soft, recurring ocean waves, and haunting echoes that saturated nearly every track, I began to imagine Aoba as a seasoned storyteller, given lost tales from a vast, mysterious island. In Windswept Adan, she effortlessly inspires vivid imagery and sensations to any listener and in Luminescent Creatures, she continues this legacy.
As an extension and evolution of Windswept Adan, the album’s introduction COLORATURA is a lively and inquisitive song, evoking a certain image in me: the beckoning of a traveler, a child, a being from the sunlit waves, the finely ground sand, and the warm reef waters into the deep black sea. A dancing piano, a skipping flute, and Aoba’s breathy melodies are ingredients for a wind of adventure and exploration into the unknown. An interview from Tone Glow proves Aoba’s true power in the creation of place. She explains that when writing and composing COLORATURA, she had a very specific image in mind: “a pirate ship with a tattered sail…As we travel across the sea, there’s a violent storm and the waves are raging—they’re as high as the ship itself. At some point, the ship goes into the waves and goes underwater, but it is here—underneath the surface—that we see these luminescent creatures. This is how the album opens.” The translation is only two lines: “To the lull of a gentle wave/Stormbreak, tailwind pushing us.” On this tumultuous ocean, we fear for our lives in the storm, but a sudden immersion into the depths is a paralyzing reminder of beauty.
So then, is this how she creates that ocean, how she stirs up a sea-bearing wind in the middle of the Rocky Mountains? With textured instrumentals, sounds of nature, and intentional lyrics? I think if we were to ask her that question, we would get a partly yes and partly no. When Aoba sings, she is not trying to communicate a specific idea, despite any ideas or images that might have helped her write. She states firmly “my music is not about communication, it is about existing.” Those who listen can “look within themselves and resonate with what is being sung.” Clearly, music is a multifaceted experience and the musician is only one part of the whole. So then, while listening to Luminescent Creatures, if you feel the slow and powerful sways of the deep blue or if you hear the bubbly sounds of a creature dashing by, you’re experiencing what is already there. Because the ocean isn’t an extrinsic presence that hangs above you in the Paramount Theatre in Denver, Colorado, it’s in you.
