When I was converting my vinyl collection to digital format, I used a piece of software which would automatically cut the recording into separate tracks. Songs with very quiet intros, breaks in the middle and false endings could end up being cut into two separate tracks. The software settings would need to be adjusted and the song re-recorded. This could be a little tiresome. It would be an absolute bugger with this album.

Temporacha is, you see, a very, very, very quiet record.  Not perhaps as pretty as their previous albums, this is a much more spectral affair, Tenniscoats, have produced a whisper of a record. Plucked strings are left to reverberate into the ether, leaving long gaps punctuated only by birdsong, the sound of a downpour or a car passing. Three or four note patterns are repeated without ever sounding like they are about to flourish into a full blown tune. This is about as minimalist as you can get.

The album is actually a collaboration between the Japanese duo of Saya and Takashi Ueno with Lawrence English of the Room40 label. The idea was to use field recordings taken in Japan of rural and urban environments and build an album to capture the essence of these settings.

For such a sparse sound, it is a strangely compelling listen. Rather than being a random collage of background sounds, it demands your attention and washes over you. Back in the early 1990s, Alex Patterson of The Orb frequently extolled the virtues of floatation tanks as a means of achieving a state of complete relaxation. I myself have never spent time in one, but if I did shell out for one and it didn’t sound like Temporacha in there, I think I’d be asking for my money back.

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