REVIEW: JAPANESE BREAKFAST - SABLE

 

4/5

Gaming In H Mart.

Breakfast is the most important artist of the year. How could Michelle Zauner not be? We've spent hours like her, 'Crying In H Mart'. Pouring over the details of the Korean-America's personal and profound autobiography that is just different for the American K-mart and Japanese 'Convenience Store Woman' line. Finish your breakfast. Like proclaiming 'Black Lives Matter', in a year were we will do anything to Stop Asian Hate like 'The Chair' of 'Killing Eve' and 'Greys Anatomy' star Sandra Oh with a bullhorn, or the Linsanity of global basketball superstar Jeremy Lin writing in TIME, Zuaner has given us a memoir that humanizes those who some still discriminate against, even after all these years of trying to peace, love and understanding (what's so bad about it?) make love take over hate. Dealing with the loss of her mother and the embrace of her culture, anyone going through ANYTHING ought to pick up this book as solidarity and solace in a world constantly trying to put us down like it is turning and scrolling. After a year in social isolated lockdown quarantine it came out of the gates of 2021, but it's still easily the memoir of the year...and we're about to see Will Smith's 'Will'. Or the 'Tales Of Life and Music' from 'The Storyteller', Dave Grohl. Not to mention fellow multi-talented celebrity Jamie Foxx's fatherly advice. 'Act Like You Got Some Sense' behind that coffee shop prison like plexiglass for the year of Barnes and Noble. If that wasn't enough, Zauner weeks later 'Posing In Bondage' with 'Parprika' released an orange 'Jubilee' for her front and center Bon Iver similair, Japanese Breakfast band. Following grief with joy for her third-album and 'Soft Sounds From Another Planet' follow-up. Cleaning up with a Spring in her step and also one of the albums of the calendar that was as sought after as hanami in the morning at that time of year in her bands first namesake country. It was clear there was nothing Zauner could not do. She could probably release another album this year if she wanted to. The director could probably even score with her own soundtrack. Oh wait, she actually has! 

Curation's for your selection process, this is not. Michelle has actually crafted this compelling conceptual set herself like Hans Zimmer or Max Richter. Self-proclaimed as "different from anything (she's) done before", nothing sounds like this. This video game soundtrack from the console that will have you double-tapping, even in the times joysticks have been replaced with keyboard warriors. The soundscape of this score is just so other-world building and encompassing. Just like the digitally atmospheric massive multilayer world of EVE Online that kept us in community with a brave new world during corona's dark and as empty as space isolation. Beyond the days of "not actual in-game footage" video games these days make more money than movies and feel even more like an expansion pack of storytelling. You only have to look at how everything's connected in the 'Visions' of the 'Star Wars' world-even down to the trading cards-to see how much this all has an effect. And on the stable cover of 'Sable' by breakfast, the pop art indigo sky and Salt Lake like desert below is laser pen trail pierced by something that looks like a Rey of light, pod racing through the sand. They say video games are a new art form and just like this album artwork they really are and as a matter of fact the soundtrack of this piece serving as modern classical music for your space odyssey like 2001 is too. Get lost in it. Sprawling for all our able time masked from the outside world until we're vaxxed, 'Sable' is a game that features a young protagonist crossing the sand to try and get home to their family. If that's something we all can't relate to right now (like this Englishman in Japan a far cry from his own), then what can we, or do we have, as we all feel like these nomad characters?

Multihyphenated talents from indie rock to the cult gamer world, Zauner is on one for the big-three of her best year. This is her jubilee, gaming and crying. H Mart should sponsor her, or at least give her her own stand off the shelf. Here she excels in encompassing a world, legions away from ours. Giving personal and profound sonic touches and even out of this world vocals to a nomads life in need of a voice like us all right now. Right from the 'Main Menu' opening that sounds so relaxing in healing that you will pause with it on repeat until the demo starts playing. Press start, or should we say play however on the 'Glider' theme and we're really off to the races for an album whose themes and tones even hint at world advice in the here and now ('Better The Mask'). The 'Day' and 'Night' alternative takes of tracks like 'The Ewer', 'Eccria', 'Hakoa' and 'Sansee' really stir, but it's when Zauner sets up an 'Inbexxi Camp' over those two periods, that we really feel it like lit 'Campfires'. Taking us into the 'Badlands' like Springsteen or the 'Thunderheart' of a Val Kilmer movie, this 'Burnt Oak Station' of 'Abandoned Grounds' in closing really paints a digital picture that could be seen in real life, even if we haven't stayed home and logged into its safe solidarity yet. We live in a new world and the 'Machinists Theme' plays it as we live our lives through someone else in avatar. All like 'Mischevious Children' wanting another five minutes with their game that we all know will really be five hours! The age of addiction in digital fields may be killing our creativity, but not Breakfast's. Japanese from the 'Mask Caster' to the 'Cartographer's' theme really plays with all these elements and stories to still tell hers. Whether it's the 'Ships', 'Ruins', or 'Nature' 'Exploration', or a 'Beetles Nest' of a 'Glow Worm Cave' this lights the way like neon from Shinjuku to Shibuya, Tokyo in crossing. This 'Beetle Detour' is a 'Wash' of 'Redsee' in this 'Chum Lair'. All the way to a 'Pyraustas Ruin'. And yes, we had to acknowledge and name every one of these 30 plus tracks, because they all play their part in over an hour and a half of a soundscape that is as vividly long as most movies are. This really feels like one too in the third act of a year scripted by Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner by her own book. Playing to the tune of her own game. And it's not over. TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Playlist Picks: 'Glider', 'Badlands (Night)', 'Ibexxi Camp (Night)'.