Cokiyu: “Twinkle Way” feat. Baths

Over the course of her career, Tokyo’s Cokiyu has mostly been creating dreamy, nature-evoking music on her own. She’s released two excellent albums, highlighted by 2011’s gorgeous Your Thorn, which found her creating her best electronic compositions to date and engaging in collaborations for the first time. With the follow-up single Haku, the bedroom artist has begun opening herself up to larger scaled collaborations, as the three original songs boast prominent “featuring” tags, without sacrificing the swirling sound she’s developed over the years. Opener “Twinkle Way” includes a guest appearance from Los Angeles beatmaker Baths, but his contributions never overwhelm the track, instead ebbing in alongside Cokiyu’s to create a lovely, charmingly solid track. Same goes for “Pulsation,” which features work from Flau-label-mate Geskia! Only the nearly-ten-minute-long “Fluorite” with LASTorder sees Cokiyu enter new territory – the song finds Cokiyu’s vocals unfolding slower than usual, while the music around them skitters and builds toward an especially epic climax. Yet that’s the exception here – despite some well-known names, Haku is a great example of one of Tokyo’s best musical dreamers at work.

Cokiyu’s Haku is available on February 18th, 2013 from Japan’s Flau Records

Written by Patrick St. Michel