Imaginary Sonicscape

For me, some of the most important characteristic of good art is that it arouses strong emotions, moves us to a different reality, lets us distance ourselves to our lives and surroundings and creatively and smartly uses the available resources. As for music albums, there are many that have these characteristics, but only few of them use them so brilliantly, that the effect on the listener is strong, clear, but yet unobvious and varied. I think that the best of them is Imaginary Sonicscape by Sigh. The title suggests what you can expect from it, but probably not the greatness of it all.

This "sonicscape" is what sucks you in immediately as you start playing the album. Sigh don't care if you are prepared or not. They greet you with extremely catchy riffs right away. What can be felt since hearing the first riff is that the music sounds more like heavy metal, than, what somebody new to Sigh could expect more, black metal. There's a lot of catchiness and melody here and, as it might seem, very little darkness or mysticism. But once you go deeper into the record, hear the vocals, read the lyrics, analyze the melodies, you realize that this piece of art is really dark and filled with pain and bitterness. But all of it is disguised in a cover of sweetness, catchiness and happiness. This makes this record be out of any genre or mood labels and boundaries. It's a style of its own, a world of its own and a league of its own.

Not only the lack of pure characteristics of any metal genre makes this record stand out that way. Many of the songs have elements of other music genres and the use of instruments that are normally not used in any classic metal genre. In the combination that many musicians would fail at, the masters Sigh created a new, enormously intriguing and strange (in a good way) taste which bases on a conscious way of using kitsch, contrast and grotesque. It's hard to tell which exact emotions these songs arouse. The easiest way to describe the emotional charge of this music is that it portrays mood swings and hopelessness. And does this in a genius way.

But what makes it so brilliant is not only the ambitious way of arousing emotions. Actually, it seems like the band tries to musically tell that, even though many things might seem dead serious here, they're not and it's still just art and fiction. Not only the use of unexpected melodies and intruments makes you feel this way, but also the moments of the songs filled with pure fun. Because, besides all the lofty stuff, this music is also very well-digestible and fun to listen to. Part of it is the mastery of surprising the listener and causing him dopamine spikes by sudden mood and tempo changes. There are even some "breaks" when you can take a rest from banging your head and other engaging activities - Angelfall (the ending of the first track), Nietzschean Conspiracy, Impromptu (Allegro Maestoso) and some parts of the rest of the songs. But those are definitely not fillers. In contrast to many similar tracks on other black metal albums, Nietzschean Conspiracy could easily be listened to separately, as it's simply an intriguing song.

No words can describe this masterpiece well enough. Play it and let the sonicscape suck you in.

Tony's classics part II: I wanted to choose something special and important for me for my 100th review for the Archives and Sigh really touched my spirit with this album. It was important for my musical development and I consider it to be a landmark of intellectualism in metal, how pretentious.

This album is the peak of creativity in metal. It's the perfect release for this so called Open Minded brigade, it has everything necessary to enrage the traditional black metal fans and proves that Japan is the weirdest and most satisfactory musical kingdom to emerge. It's an unique album in Sigh's excellent discography. Located right at the middle of their career, it still has the mystic grace of their past endeavours without the slight bastardization of their black metal sound with overt symphonic elements and added gritty and busty female vocals.

The band always had an original vision ever since their seminal debut and they still lead the charge today with an undying liking of their weird world. 1993's Scorn Defeat was an exploration of the dark mantra of Japan while Imaginary Sonicscape is a trip on mushrooms full of colours, full of depth. Sigh's attempt at recreating this sound while keeping the elements they explored on the following releases (Hangman's Hymns and Scenes from Hell) was a success with their latest album In Somniphobia. I can understand why this album was so important for the composers, it helped to fully bridge into the experimental/avant garde territories and established yet another side to their persona.

Nevertheless, it's assuredly a divisive album that still shakes the foundations of the metal monument. How far will the genre go while still being able to maintain its tenacious identity? My opinion on such debate is answered by my unfathomable fondness for this record. It's one of the most glorious tour de force the genre has seen.

The main element that make Imaginary Sonicscape is the diversity of its sound. The maturity that the trio achieved through the recording is simply astounding. From jazz overtones to classical, baroque and fusion, Mirai and company are monsters of experimentation and their vision would never be as grand as it was here. From the noisy psychedelia of “Voices” to the hellish beach club of “A Sunset Song”, Sigh brushes everything with ease and they're a gifted painter who knows how to mix their colours.

It's a known fact that the Japanese are masterful musicians and Sigh doesn't neglect to pay homage to that side of their culture. Shinichi Ishikawa is one of the best guitarist in music and he shines everywhere here. He's sadly underused nowadays and a bit buried. Even though Mirai's moog and keys are often at the forefront of the sound, his associate will often unleash these juicy solos. It has everything, from Maidenesque melodic leads found in the epic “Slaughtergarden” to riffy, groovy riffs while never truly leaving the black metal elements far from the picture. Nonetheless, it's not an album for Tsjuder or Behexen fans, they truly leave these tortured goatblooded lands to reach one where instead of invoking Satan to kill your enemies, you smoke weed and play Super Smash Bros Melee with him, he even let you take the same character all the time, I'll take Luigi, thanks Lucifer!

Borrowing the progressiveness that made Dream Theater's early releases so good, Kawashina explores a keyboard heavy form of metal. His moog sound is very original and, leaves a lusty impression on the listener. As vivid and inventive as Jon Lord was in Deep Purple, he knew that bass wasn't enough this time around, additional tools were to be used to create a lush paradise that is so distinctive. The fast and present keys are a good companion to the catchy riffs such as in “Bring Back the Dead” (the song was extended from its original version). Contrary to plenty of self proclaimed avant garde bands, Sigh still delivers plenty of metallic riffs upon the listeners, their experimentation is not an excuse to stop writing these blistering guitar leads to rely solely on the atmosphere created by the synths.

Their lyrics are silly but who cares when it's so awesome, it's kind of pseudo evil and I don't think they were truly serious about them or maybe their grasp of the English language wasn't up to the task. It might has been nice to use Japanese lyrics though to confuse the westerners even more perhaps? It's weird that such an overtly grandiose and psychedelic record relies on such evilesque lyrics as its thematic base

The identity is also quite international considering it's Japanese. If you followed my reviews, you know I'm a big fan of Ningen-Isu, this progressive band with the perfect and extensive career, Sigh, compared to them, doesn't necessarily want their roots to go hand in hand with their music. Even though both bands looked in the early days of rock to develop their respective personalities. They dive into the 1960s and 1970s for their influences and that's admirable, it proves that they're able to leave their confinements and search and explore something else.

Sigh always had to deal with a weakness and it's still the case here. While it's certainly not the worst around, Mirai's vocals were always the black sheep of their sound. His harsh black metal delivery here creates some sort of dichotomy with the less than static sound here. Nothing is perfect but what is admirable is the ability to know your strengths and weaknesses, the band knows how to set the table in a way nothing looks less appetizing even if a side plate is more mediocre than the main course. They do that with the vocals, there's some additional ones, even some female bits here and there and it's all cohesive. It's sort of a secondary aspect of the band here even though they're quite present. Sometimes it's buried under vocoders (not as lame as when Cynic unleashes their robots against our ears, don't be afraid). Point is, Mirai is a gentleman who knows how to travel while protecting his confidence.

Immersing, it's so vast and grasping that I have some problems talking about it. All its aspects are punching my belly like little bullets of perfection wanting to leave an indelible mark on my skin. Branching into porno music with their dirty synthesizers, there's orgasms everywhere and you never expect them to explode all over your face. Sigh creates phallic sonicscapes with their musical morphing skills, changing their genres with all their releases, exploring vast, extraneous lands.

I think it's a perfect record thanks to its intricate songwriting delivered throughout long and diverse songs. The musicianship, always trying hard to impress, is truly masterful. Mirai's instruments credits in the booklet is longer than your curriculum vitae. He's pictured around eight keyboards that would put Neil Peart's drum setup to shame. It's a masterpiece of vision, it has this vivid atmosphere that you can't find nowhere else, that's the proof that a band managed to move in an unknown direction while all his pursuivants were too puritan to follow them into abstraction.

Highlights:
-The James Bond orchestra feel of the keys in “Voices”.
-The Smith/Murray leads midway through “Slaughtergarden”.
-The disco boogey and the Abbath on the beach sound of “A Sunset Song”.
-The groovy hand claps of “Ecstatic Transformation”
-Who the hell needs these fucking highlights, listen to the damn thing you twat!

Metantoine's Magickal Realm

A great thing about heavy metal is that it has reached virtually every corner of the world, and the more recent generation of metal has seen many of its brightest shining stars coming from places one might not first expect. From Japan comes Sigh, a band that is a current frontrunner in black metal of the 'weird' variety. A band that has wandered through a different style with seemingly each new album they release nowadays, Sigh finds a unique and quirky sound on 'Imaginary Sonicscape', staying true to any avant-garde label while being infectiously catchy and fun. These certainly aren't tags one would normally think of when speaking of black metal, but Sigh makes it work. Although the band's experiments here are not all successful, I can't help but love what the band has done here.

Recently, I've been finding quite a few black metal bands that are incorporating ample amounts of psychedelic rock into their sound. Sigh is no exception to this, and they make the combination sound very convincing. Although Sigh's sound is certainly rooted in black metal, many of the songs here use upbeat hooks and melodies to give the music a sense that it is more parts 'fun' than 'funeral', and on some tracks (most notably the ridiculously enjoyable rocker 'Bring Back The Dead'), you shouldn't be surprised if you're rasping along to the chorus. Although pop music is in audible effect here however, there is good reason to call Sigh an avant-garde metal band, although the weirdness is not always in full swing.

Sigh takes what have otherwise been largely (although not fully) a straightforward melodic black metal album and adds strange electronic effects overtop some parts, to give a quirkier feel. While it is only to the benefit and credit of the band that they are taking risks, many of the electronic layers they use sound shrill and even a little distracting from the main attraction, which is the wonderful songwriting and delivery. The band takes some big leaps with composition as well; although 'Imaginary Sonicscape' is no stranger to the concept of the melodic hook, there are moments here which define any category that Sigh may have been placed in before. The highlight of the album 'Requiem - Nostalgia' even plunges into something that sounds like an Ennio Morricone soundtrack to some Spaghetti Western film. As a rule, it is the compositional experiments that the band takes that are always more successful than the weaker layering experiments. That is the only flaw that seeks to demerit this masterpiece luckily however, and while 'Imaginary Sonicscape's more adventurous segments may take a little while to get used to despite the instantly endearing nature of the rest of it, Sigh has made a masterpiece here that defies tradition.

Some of you awful elitist types out there – I know you’re reading! – surely want to jump on this band for watering down black metal with prog rock and… other influences. You silly fools; that ship has long sailed. By now we should be wondering why on earth a psych rock/heavy metal/avant-garde band would want to utilize black metal vocals.

Because, in spite of the myriad views of what constitutes “black metal”, there is just no way to construe this music as such. And because Mirai sounds awful. I thought he always kind of did; he does not emit a piercing shriek, or a menacing snarl… it’s more like Helen Keller post-throat cancer: rather effeminate and monotone.

In fairness, any black or death metal vocalist would/does sound worse in a rock or heavy metal environment. It’s music that’s designed to be sung to, whereas your Morbid Angels and your Darkthrones growl and scream precisely because there’s just nowhere in their music for singing to go. Check the first track of this album, which is a pretty straightforward rocker and is thus the most offensive in that aspect: Mirai’s just bellowing over everything and you can’t help but want him to shut the hell up. Carry a tune or get out of the goddamn way!

(Lest you think I’m being unduly close-minded on this matter, I point out that Sigh at least apparently agrees with me, as they’ve recently switched to clean vox. But I have heard but one song of the newest album.)

Well, it’s not all bad. “I am the sun, I am the moon!” he screams in Scarlet Dream – okay, that’s pretty catchy – and the artificially distorted vocals sound okay alongside the slow triphop in Nietzchean Conspiracy.

Yes, the triphop. I told you Sigh weren’t black metal anymore. At this point, I count three major categories of influence on their sound, all of roughly equal significance:

1) heavy metal… or verrrrry early “black metal”, like Mercyful Fate,
2) progressive/psychedelic rock, and
3) every other style of music conceived in the history of popular music.

I’m barely kidding. The triphop – with accompanying sax, no less – will seem much less strange after you have heard the band break directly from heavy metal into… is that reggae in Scarlet Dream? Something like that. And why put reggae (or whatever) in the middle of a metal song? Well, why not put reggae in a metal song? Perhaps you can supply your own answer to that.

Back when Sigh were still (mostly) black metal, I think the idea behind their weird sidebars was to emulate horror movies, and the way they contrast the benign and everyday with the horrific. So there’d be some tame, peaceful-sounding string (keyboard) stuff, perhaps, and then, like a stinger, comes the black metal.

I thought that worked about as well at generating a horror movie-like atmosphere as does Mortician’s habit of using sound clips pilfered from their collection of horror movies. That is to say, I did not think that it worked very well at all.

Now that Sigh’s music consists almost entirely of weird sidebars, you have to wonder how seriously they took that philosophy anyway. Maybe they just really like playing in lots of different styles – and then recording that music – and then putting it all on the same album, instead of separate ones, like sane people would. You can certainly rest assured there’s nothing scary about this album, provided that your musical horizons extend beyond CCM.

If there’s a guiding philosophy behind the avant-garde indulgences on this album, it’s something like… fun… almost. Layers and layers of tripped-out sound – excellently produced – leaping from one idea to the next without warning, while still keeping enough within the bounds of rock songwriting to remain easily digestible. Some of you might not warm up to that. I assure you that it could be worse. Suppose they were trying to “broaden the boundaries of metal by blending eclectic influences”, blah blah, “open-minded”, blah blah. Now that would be scary. And trite. And pretentious. And typical of avant-garde metal.

Luckily, this album is not typical and not pretentious. Furthermore – this is key – it’s actually listenable, provided you’re up to rolling with the punches. Reggae? Sure, I’ll go with that. I hate triphop, but I like Nietzchean Conspiracy. As “catchy” metal goes, it sure beats the hell out of listening to yet another eunuch wailing about elves. As catchy music goes, it beats the hell out of damn near everything. Why listen to only one kind of annoying music when you can listen to them all at the same time? They should play this on the radio instead of… whatever the hell it is that they play on the radio these days.

As other reviewers have already mentioned, Sigh is hard to classify, because they refuse to stay within the boundaries of any one genre. It’s metal, all right, but the entire album is laced with so many different musical styles, from psychedelic rock to hard bop, that it becomes impossible to define them!

On Imaginary Sonicscape, Sigh experiments more than have ever before, taking what’d they had accomplished on Hail Horror Hail[ even further. Unlike other metal bands whose jazz and psychedelic influences can often be very discreet, Sigh makes them glaringly obvious: from the totally popish melodies in Sunset Song to the jazzy solo in Eecstatic Transformation. What’s more, Sigh tends to put on a very theatrical feel throughout the entire album, be it through handclapping, synths, or even flutes. Yet Sigh never puts it on too thick, and manages to blend all these different styles seamlessly.

Very similar to prog, Imaginary Sonicscape adds in a variety of different song structures, textures, and moods from song to song, which also adds to the theatrical aspect of the album. The best part is you never know what the hell to expect. One moment Sigh could be putting out a killer riff, then the next moment jump into a creepy theatrical interlude, yet still manage to make the transition as seamless as possible with no awkward moments to be found. This is avant-garde metal at it’s best.

“Eecstatic Transformation” is probably the best track on the album, which highlights Sigh’s songwriting as well as their jazzy influences. There’s one point in the song where Sigh has a nice little riff going, then take a 180 degree turn into a very melodic, spacious interlude that sends chills down my spine every time I hear it. “Corpsecry Angelfall”, “Scarlet Dream”, “Sunset Song”, and “Bring Back the Dead” are some other standout tracks as well, but there really isn’t a bad track on Imaginary Sonicscape.

All in all, Imaginary Sonicscape won’t be your bag if you’re expecting some traditional BM (or BM at all, for that matter), but you're sure to love it if you're into avant-garde styles of metal.

Happy listening!

Sigh is labelled as "black metal" by many. People who even attempt to label them with that genre do not fully see the vast array of influences and musical styles attemped by this Japanese three-piece.

Disco? Pop? Prog? Funk? Elements from all these styles are contained in this masterpiece known as "Imaginary Sonicscape." Sigh is by far one of the most unique metal bands. Ever.

The guitar work on this album is superb. The solos are quite well-done, and Shinichi is a great guitarist who can create great, catchy riffs. Mirai's keyboard work is phenomenal. His eclectic use of keyboards is great, and unique keyboards are featured on every second of every song. He is also a great player of the keys, and one song is dedicated to just Mirai playing a fas piano part.

The cons of this album are the vocals, the lyrics, and the drums. Actually, I really wouldn't call the drums a "con", but they are very bland and simple, which does work well with the music. The vocals are traditional black metal screams, which really don't go well with the the music. The lyrics are horrendous. IT'S PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC! IT'S AVANT-GARDE! WHY IS HE TALKING ABOUT CliCHE BLACK METAL THINGS LIKE SATAN AND TORTURE! I really wish the lyrics were just in Japanese.

This is a great album, and one the most unique experiances.

BEST TRACKS ON RECORD: "Requiem: Nostalgia" and "Corpsecry: Angelfall"

Sigh, having solidified their place as one of the best Japanese black metal bands with their early releases, went for a more experimental bent in their later albums, and while those didn’t always work consistently, the experimentation was interesting enough. Their sound has always been intriguing, and anyone interested in metal that is barely traditional would enjoy Imaginary Sonicscape, a disk that features the most polish of their albums to date.

Any album which begins with a Minimoog solo and ends with a distorted version of the Minute Waltz is bound to be intriguing, and the sounds between beginning and end are quite excellent. Shinichi is one of the better non-prog guitarists, and while he may not shred scales as easily as a Michael Romeo or John Petrucci, his riffs and solos are brilliant and nostalgic, many of them inspired by the chunky Iron Maiden riffs of old. And while Mirai’s howled vocals are decent and his bass lines traditional, it is clear that he is in his element surrounded by synthesizers of all kinds - the album credits lists almost every instrument he plays, among them a vocorder, Fender Rhodes piano, Hammond Organ, the aforementioned Minimoog, and many, many others. The way these are implemented over the classic metal sound is also quite brilliant - they are used less to show off Mirai’s playing talent and more to show off his compositional skills, as many of the arrangements use the instruments to their full potential. Nieztchean Conspiracy uses absolutely no guitar or bass, and features some quite real-sounding synth strings and horns that is layered to create an almost jazzy sound, one that is only reinforced during the organ solo. The album features many songs that sound quite little like metal in the traditional definition, but are nonetheless excellent. The opening of Sunset Song is an oddly happy riff considering some of the twists that the song takes; Impromptu, which is a solo piano arrangement that leads right into Return to the Chaos, will be stylistically familiar to those fond of neo-classical arrangements, and the male operatic vocal chorus in the Requiem - Nostalgia is both surprising and satisfying. And the album’s epic, 10-minute Slaughterguarden Suite is unpredictable throughout, from the earliest synthesizer-only parts to the guitar and keyboard solos later in the piece. Sigh’s unpredictability is clearly its greatest asset.

While not all will enjoy the Avant-garde style of metal that Sigh employs, anyone who desires a disk that is experimental without being utter crap, as is the result of many ill-fated experimental side projects in Europe that trade off band members like sex partners, will enjoy Imaginary Sonicscape. At the very least, it’ll keep you guessing.