Myth of Tomorrow boldly calls its own shots. The second album from composer-pianist Erika Dohi is like a sonic vision board, reminiscent of albums like Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come or Radiohead’s OK Computer that have attempted to predict the future of their respective genres. The Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records release sees Dohi teaming up with Metropolis Ensemble and producer William Britelle. With a broad palette of instruments and textures and references to ancient mythologies, Dohi’s album is an attempt at mythmaking in real time.
The opening track, “Iznagi no Mikoto,” refers to the Shinto deity who created the Japanese islands with his sister Izanami. The track almost sound-paints the idea of creation, an aesthetic Big Bang in which synthesizer drones swell and build on each other while hand percussion accelerates into the next track.
The first half of “Ame Onna” is an almost neo-soul groove laden with electronic keyboards and flute stabs, and the second is a looping minimalist groove. Heavily processed and autotuned vocals are introduced here and are a consistent presence on the album. This aesthetic choice is realized with care, but its usage has varying mileage — it’s easy to imagine how striking occasional moments of un-processed vocals would be amid the swirling electronics. On “Ame Onna,” for example, there is so much musical carryover from the first half that the contrasting effect of a new section is slightly dulled.
On other tracks like, “Aratani” the delivery of the vocals brings a really infectious rhythmic energy. Most of the track features sustained chords that have an effect of timelessness and obscure the pulse, which makes all of Dohi’s galloping and swung vocal rhythms extremely catchy. Adam O’Farrill’s trumpet solo, backed by a drum machine groove, is in direct conversation with Dohi’s vocals from the first half of the track, at once abstract and carefully measured.
“Saturn Square Venus” and “In The Wild” make an interesting pair. The former is a duet for piano and violin, featuring Lauren Cauley; this is the first time that we’ve heard purely acoustic instruments on the album, and the relative minimalism is a welcome foil to the constant activity of the previous two tracks. “In The Wild” has a similar texture, but instead of swirling piano chords as a backdrop for the violin, synthesizer provides the foundation for a powerful saxophone solo by David Leon.
The title track looks forward and backward at the same time, making deliberate references to traditional music in a new context. Featuring a mix of drum machines, keyboards, synthesizers, and koto, “Myth of Tomorrow” imagines how the ancient Japanese instrument can be used in modern music, notably without any obvious extended techniques. The autotuned vocals are back, but they settle into the mix a bit better now. Where they previously felt distracting or at odds with the surrounding texture, here they work with their environment.
“Transplante” and “Shahzad + Erika” make for another pair, both relatively melancholic and ambient. The first features spoken word from Carol Féliz against a sea of electronic chords. Almost like a mission statement for the album, she says, “A blended tongue, carving its way through neural pathways. Dressing its mother language in a costume that at first didn’t fit.” On “Shahzad + Erika,” Shahzad Ismaily swells and drones on an Oberheim synthesizer, drifting in and out of consonance for over three minutes before Dohi enters on the piano.
The album’s standout track is the 11-minute closer “1111 / First Responders April 29, 2020,” which combines the best concepts from the album to great effect. The beautiful moments of quiet minimalist introspection are present, along with surprising stabs of groove. A lo-fi keyboard and drum machine jam leads seamlessly into an extended ambience that takes up most of the track. A brief saxophone solo gives way to a long drone, before we hear a voice memo recorded by Dohi in the early days of the pandemic: “Only you can change it. And by it, I mean you are changing yourself.”
Myth of Tomorrow tends to lean heavily on a small handful of soundscapes that are effective on their own, but sometimes run the risk of feeling a little monotonous when combined. But the extended drone textures are also what make the unexpected moments of groove and melody so exciting and allow the occasional interplay of electronic and acoustic — especially traditional vs. modern instruments — to pop in an unexpected way. Despite a few pacing problems, Myth of Tomorrow offers a dynamic and unique use of an extremely broad scope of instruments, textures, and styles.
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