4 out of 5

Produced by: Makoto Kawabata

Label: VHF Records

Mingling the hopes and fears musically expressed on Inui 1 and 2, Inui 3 is all about mystery, shifting and morphing in response to itself; turning a corner and bemusedly finding itself back where it began.

The centerpiece here is certainly the 45 minute concluding track, Fuku, which has no business being as hauntingly grabbing as it is.  A cavern full of feedback and shimmering guitars, Fuku slowly pulses with intensity – feedback overwhelming, then wrestled to submission by the guitars, then settling into temporary quiet before getting hot and bothered again.  Longer than many albums, when the track time came up I strapped in for something… more interminable, but the song’s natural progressions just feel good to get lost in, pondering your own doubts, coming to conclusions which are spoken into the swallowing darkness of the reverb… and then the track ends.

Opener Sui hits a similar vibe, if with more overall volume and directness.  It’s on equal footing to Fuku, but, at a pithy 12 minutes, can’t travel as far, and once you’ve been through the whole album, its listening experience is eclipsed by that closer.

Track 2, Ken, is another masterpiece, this time of slow, creeping, minimalist dread, the perfect lead-in to our 45-minute epic.