Grab your best pair of headphones and settle in for a cinematic audiophilic experience. Anoice is a Japanese instrumental outfit who have been making songs for the past several years but have escaped my radar. Their new album The Hidden Forest is out now, and is a journey in symphony and a lesson in composition that we can all learn from.

The artful concept

The concept for the album is an avant-garde attempt at perception. Through the eyes of musicians, the music that is produced from a visual can be stunning. What Anoice do is imbibe the essence of 17 paintings perfected by Naoko Okada and provide s soul-stirring experience of listening to a visual. The treat is to listen to all the songs, then see the visuals and experience the song once more. It is like hearing a dream, however surreal that might sound.

Anoice create a reservoir of emotion to draw from, ranging from the melody of long story or the melancholy that they draw from a perfect day for a funeral. The songs tend to transcend time, as you search for the visual, something you haven’t seen yet. It is a niche and beautiful concept, stretching what the creative mind has maintained to be boundaries. The ambient sounds draw us closer to the emotion-like the moments that freeze time like Zimmer’s scores.

Quiet wish is an expose of the capacity of the instrumentalists, while into the light can be heard as a transitional. Each song is gripping a certain still, and is very evident by the work put in to depict it. For a song like heartbeat, they take a stirring, thriller part filled with suspense and the work of Zimmer’s own magic on the ivories. Magnolia is an encapsulated moment of joy, with the piano and ambience alone justifying the means.

Curating an audio museum

Listen to songs like the promised day if you want to be in awe of the seismic display of strings and synths complementing each other. As I mentioned earlier, diving into the reason behind these songs will be foolishness. The true art lies in appreciating what it can do.

Takahiro Kido, Yuki Murata, Utaka Fujiwara & Tadashi Yoshikawa do a fantastic job of this passion project. That is what it feels like, moments into something that has effortlessly mastered what its intention was. Converting visuals into music isn’t easy, the picture doesn’t speak a thousand words every time. Some words perish before reaching the listener. That is where Anoice succeed.

A sure fit for the series Peaky Blinders without a doubt! Check out the classic series here – https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/peaky_blinders