Eiko Ishibashi - Antigone

‘Antigone’ is a chilling look at our already-alternate reality, coming from inside Eiko Isibashi’s own head. Her band brings a wide array of sounds and moods, shading pop, funk and jazz, ambient, electronic and musique concrète in a bittersweet latticework. Interlocking her new songs in seamless long play flow with the compositional ambitions of her acclaimed soundtrack work, Eiko’s expressions are epic and intimate. 2025 will never be the same.

For ‘Antigone’, her first album of songs with lyrics and singing since 2018’s acclaimed ‘The Dream My Bones Dream’, Eiko teases out images from a dystopia not unlike the one we’ve already got. Hers is suffused with a ‘scene missing’ quality, its continuity laced with sudden, odd details sprung like traps from within her music’s smooth, expansive sound.

Whatever’s going on here doesn’t feel linear, but it’s not unfamiliar. It’s a clash of context with Eiko’s serene vocals and the well- appointed precision of the soundscape - uncanny, disturbing, not entirely okay. And it keeps ticking like clockwork through the whole album.

An accomplished keyboardist / multi-instrumental composer and improviser, Eiko consolidates her conceptions throughout ‘Antigone’. On her early song-based albums - 2013’s sci-fi-themed ‘Imitation of Life’ and 2014’s poptastic ‘Car & Freezer’, we sensed an album- oriented direction, built song by song into an inevitable whole. 2018’s conceptually-united ‘The Dream My Bones Dream’ allowed Eiko to tell stories closer to home. Her instrumental works since then - 2022’s ‘For McCoy’ (Black Truffle) and the soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films, ‘Drive My Car’ and ‘Evil Does Not Exist’ - have seen her diversity of musical ideas operating in an increasingly integrated long-form presentation.

With these transformative encounters in hand, Eiko and her band - drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, bassist Marty Holoubek, Norwegian accordionist Kalle Moberg, Ermhoi on backing vocals, Joe Talia playing percussion and Jim O’Rourke on Bass VI, synths, etc - bring a wide array of sounds and moods to the songs here, referencing pop, funk and jazz, ambient, electronic and musique concrète in a seamless flow.

‘Antigone’ is a bittersweet look at our already-alternate reality, Eiko’s jarringly personal vision glimpsed through a latticework of ambitious compositions and on-lock production techniques.