It’s still puzzling that critical discourse seems to break down when it comes to categorising the various strains of song/electronica fusions that burgeoned in the early 00s. “Folktronica” was the closest catch-all term to what this duo are doing on this album made slowly between 2002 and 2005, but doesn’t really get close enough. The backing tracks are made of wondrously pure tones, glitches and clicks, and subsonic booms — this was, after all, the “Clicks & Cuts” era, and the influence of Pan Sonic and Raster-Noton was everywhere in left field music. But Noriko‘s gentle vocals and songwriting, and their perfect merging into the electronics, are something else. Are they twee indie? Folk? Pop? Reviews at the time compared it to Björk, as if that were they only thing a female vocal and off-beat electronics could sound like, but really it’s in a dreamy, crepuscular style all its own.