These days I have been listening to her new (in fact, last year's) album Tokyo Humming, which represents a walk around different areas of Tokyo in the span of one full day (from the morning till the late night), and am blown away by the imagination and execution of it. Wordless female vocals play the important part on this album (and her music in general) - well, there are words, maybe, but not in any meaningful language - human voice is used primarily as an instrument. Instrumentation is a mix of acoustics and electronics, with some ancient and exotic instruments. To pass on this album would be a shame enough for any more adventurous listener, but the more baffling fact is that Mrs. Ueno has four equally strange and wonderful albums before it:
Voices, being about women (all the song titles are female names);
Puzzle, being about, well, puzzles and games (all the song titles are puzzle names);
SSS or Simply Sing Songs, being the covers of some Irish traditional songs;
Shizen genshou, being about natural phenomena (rain, wind, snow, etc)
And she has a more-than-20-years-long career. She was a member of many excellent groups, but that would be a little too much for me to write about now. First-rate artist, neither some disposable pop singer, nor some unaccessable, unlistenable performer pretending to create "art". Has anyone here listened to her? There is a MySpace page for Tokyo Humming, where samples can be heard. And Ueno homepage is here.
Wonderful stuff. Subarashii.
