Ichiko Aoba’s Luminescent Creatures honours the interconnectedness of humankind and the natural world

Inspired by the unique, isolated beauty of Japan’s southernmost islands and their luminescent waters, the latest chamber-folk opus from singer-songwriter Ichiko Aoba explores the innate connections humans have with both our surroundings and one another.

Radiating out from the southern tip of Kyūshū, Japan’s sprawling Ryukyu archipelago plays host to hundreds to thousands of humpback whales every winter. Seeking the warmth of the tropics in which to breed and raise their calves, they migrate huge distances south from the waters around Russia and Alaska, unknowingly transforming Okinawa and its surrounds into a seasonal mecca for whale-watchers. 

Tokyo-based singer-songwriter Ichiko Aoba is one such amateur cetologist. Now a regular visitor to the southernmost Yaeyama Islands, her interest was first piqued back in 2019, while playing a festival in the more northerly region of Tōhoku – still a hotbed for controversial ‘research whaling’. Speaking via an interpreter over Zoom, the 34-year-old recalls, “Seeing these whales being pulled from the ocean made me want to interact with them while they were still alive and able to swim. So I decided to head down south to meet some of the whales in their natural habitat.”

This journey provided the inspiration for Aoba’s 2020 concept record, Windswept Adan – billed as the soundtrack to a fictitious movie set on an imaginary island in the Ryukyu archipelago, in the East China Sea. That acclaimed collection found her collaborating with composer and arranger Taro Umebayashi, who augmented the arresting, finger-picked folk of her first six albums with the ambient hum of accordion, twinkling kalimba and occasional flurries of strings or woodwind. To assist with world-building, Aoba enlisted photographer Kodai Kobayashi as art director. Together, they combined his imagery of their travels with her sketches and notes, compiling a beautiful, 88-page book that functions as a companion piece to the album. 

Released at a moment in time when listeners were forcibly sequestered and seeking an alternative to the oppressive reality of lockdown, the serene sounds of Windswept Adan would provide Aoba’s international breakthrough – a full decade on from her debut Kamisori Otome, which she released aged only 19. Support slots with Weyes Blood, Japanese Breakfast and Black Country, New Road followed soon after, while Caroline Polachek added her name to Aoba’s ever-growing list of fans, which already numbered Owen Pallett and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono, as well as previous collaborators Cornelius, Mac DeMarco, Brian Eno and the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto. 

Today, she looks back on the period fondly. “As more and more people found [the album], I felt like I no longer had ownership over it – in a good way. And reaching a wider audience, I was able to ask them the big questions that I’d always wanted to.”

Aoba’s forthcoming follow-up ventures deeper still. Taking its name from the closing track on Windswept Adan, Luminescent Creatures contemplates the manner in which all organisms are interconnected, across time. Lead single Flag introduces the theme. “Is it true that we are reborn so many times over?” she muses in her crystalline semi-whisper, over a coruscating acoustic guitar line that gradually builds in momentum. Named after the light-emitting compound that produces bioluminescence, Luciférine develops that idea further, finding Aoba impressing over symphonic strings, flute and piano that “inside each of us there is a place for our stars to sleep”.

For Aoba, this fascination with bioluminescence dates back to the making of Windswept Adan. “I started to study the first forms of life that originated in the sea. At some point, they noticed that in one form or another they were alone, and so started to light up as a courtship ritual. But it was also a way for them to communicate with other single-cell organisms, saying, ‘I’m here,’ ‘I love you,’ or ‘I want to be loved by you.’ In a lot of ways, humans still do that.”

As research, Aoba spent extended periods in the Ryukyu Arc – specifically on the stunning coral island of Hateruma. Just under 13km² in area and home to around 600 people, it is the most southerly inhabited island in Japan. Aoba cites the population’s self-sufficiency as a continued inspiration: “As people that are very closely connected to nature, they’re very careful with water and cautious about electricity, and at the same time, they’re very interested in music and song. Also, when you go to a very small island, a person’s emotions are very easy to see, especially compared to in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. So I find this simple lifestyle ideal.” 

Through speaking with the local community and her solo expeditions monitoring the subtle changes in the reef, Aoba began to assemble a picture of the natural and man-made factors influencing Hateruma’s climate. “Because [Hateruma] is directly in the path of a lot of typhoons, it’s very easy to observe the changes in the coral,” she elaborates. “For example, when a typhoon hits, the water temperature drops and that causes the coral to be rejuvenated.”

Aoba would dive deep into the ocean without artificial breathing aids, succumbing to the awe she felt in the face of such boundless power. That same sense of wonder permeates her most recent songwriting, which speaks poetically of the strange permanence of galaxies, oceans and the human spirit. Unlike Windswept Adan, there is no singular narrative; rather, it’s a series of reflections on a theme. And though she remains intently concerned about climate change, Aoba deliberately eschewed didacticism in the hope her appreciation for the natural world might help her message permeate more organically. 

As a lyricist, she recounts questioning the most fundamental parts of the human psyche for this record, to the extent that “at times it felt like I’d put a letter in a bottle and just let it out to sea”. Because, at its heart, Luminescent Creatures is an album about the manner in which the natural world and humankind are inextricably intertwined. For Aoba, separating the two would be nothing short of reductive: “Even to make a distinction [between the two] is strange. Our bodies are made of those same materials that make up the natural world. The only difference is how they’re put together.”

Reunited with Umebayashi as well as Windswept Adan’s engineer Toshihiko Kasai, Aoba set about expanding her sonic horizons even further, conjuring a complete musical universe in the process. On Pirsomnia, her river-clear coo arrives intertwined with chirruping electronics and ambient synth washes that evoke celestial activity. Mazamun pairs the sound of a celeste with a diaphanous vocal, while Coloratura conjures bucolic beauty from an inquisitive flute melody, meandering keys and the effervescent shimmer of chimes.

Referencing the coordinates for the island’s lighthouse, 24° 03’’ 27.0” N 123° 47’ 07.5” E offers a fresh arrangement of a Hateruma folk song, setting indigenous instrumentation to the crepuscular drone of cello. When asked about the song, Aoba reaches for her sanshin, a traditional folk instrument native to the Okinawan and Amami islands. Resembling a three-stringed guitar with a long, thin neck and a small, rectangular body covered in vivid snakeskin, she demonstrates its twanging tone, using the horn of a water buffalo as a plectrum.

Considering the decision to incorporate traditional instruments on the record, Aoba explains, “It’s not really even about evoking a particular timbre. Rather, what all of [these instruments] have in common is that they evoke a sense of nostalgia. These sounds can help you relive your memories, or think back to a time before you were even born. And if you go back far enough, you can find those very first luminescent creatures that lit up in search of one another.”

A large part of Luminescent Creatures’ charm lies in its three-dimensional nature, as Aoba and Umebayashi attempt to capture the ineffable magic of the natural world with a mix of instrumentation, field recordings and sound design. Aoba recalls, “We talked about how to emulate non-musical sounds, such as a person’s heartbeat or whale song, using instruments. We also incorporated a real whale song that I recorded while diving in the Amami islands.”

Another valuable byproduct of the record’s immersive quality is that it helps non-Japanese speakers navigate the language barrier without losing the essence of the songs’ meaning. “Something Taro and I discussed a lot was reaching beyond your typical sort of music-lover crowd,” Aoba explains. “We were hoping [the album] would have the same sort of universal appeal as when you walk by an old woman hanging the laundry and you hear her singing. It was about evoking that very fundamental, very primal love of music, and the way it can really reach you on a deeper level.”

It’s a sentiment neatly summed up by the album’s closing track, Wakusei no Namida. Referencing “a melody of a million light years” over skeletal guitar and the distant hum of whale song swimming several fathoms deep, it posits Luminescent Creatures as a fixed point from which we, as humans, can look forward and back, feeling innately connected to both our surroundings and to one another. A crumb of comfort, perhaps, in a world in flux. But as Aoba so beautifully reminds us time and again, this connection is the only certainty that any of us have.