Sydney-raised, Tokyo-based artist Joey Sachi has caught our attention with a series of mesmerising singles released over the last few years, including honouring us with the premiere of her debut single ‘Fractured’ back in 2023. She has now collected two of these singles in an EP entitled ‘Rise’ with additional unheard material, and, continuing to work with producer AKINAT, the result is something quite special.
Sachi says of opening track ‘circuits’:
The mantra throughout was… ‘it’s not that deep.’ As a sensitive girl this was no mean feat. I really drilled it into every creative decision though…to put it simply I wanted to have ‘fun’ writing this one! Isn’t it funny once I released the pressure I started to dance on the line between genres. Years of 90s RnB i’ve consumed started to peek through… hopefully just the right amount.
It’s a soft mesmersing track with Sachi’s vocals to the fore, soft and multi-layered with a glitchy, sticky musical bedrock underneath, a pattering percussive heartbeat. There’s a vocal complexity with a Japanese train station announcement in the outro.
‘grace’ displays a further development of sachi’s sound – something more fractured and esoteric and yet still infused with her soft velvet vocals and enigmatic style.
Sachi says the track is:
…an ode to someone who changes the way you see the world. I wanted it to feel like a deep breath out, an easy kind of love and listen. It’s a quiet promise to look at your life differently, even shift perspective… to ‘see the beauty’ in every little thing.
I wrote it in a single day. Unlike other songs in the past when I’ve constantly refined or reharmonised… with this track I barely changed a thing! As always, I brought it to my producer AKINAT, who has this innate understanding of the direction I want to take my music. He took my raw demo and transformed it into something that felt fresh and alive.
Whisper-soft vocals and a haunting production creates something as diaphanous as a silken veil drifting in the wind.
‘back to square one’ channels a little Lily Allen with the soft clear delivery, underpinned with little intriguing twists and twirls. Sachi says:
An idiom I’ve used far more often than I care to admit… revolving around and playing with the idea of starting over in more ways than one. Separating from the person you love, in turn setting yourselves free, but still very much having to build yourself up again from the ground up – rock bottom. All the while, lamenting how different things could have been if only you were armed with the wisdom of hindsight.
AKINAT’s production creates many layers that make the sound refreshing with unexpected turns and many layers.
‘7 Seconds’ begins with enigmatic spoken dialogue over haunting synths before Sachi’s ethereal vocals softly glide across the surface like a silken veil as the dialogue ends with the words what does love mean, Mr Wearing? The beat is mesmerising while the two vocals and heavenly harmonies interweave, dripping with a yearning melancholy. Vocoded interpersions add a motorik element, augmented by the dappling, pattering percussion. The production is gorgeous – the instrumentation feels like a meeting of European masters like Kraftwerk, Air and Daft Punk with the voclas adding a whole other dimension.
The themes on ‘7 Seconds’ were directly inspired by British classical musician Clive Wearing; an accomplished conductor, Tenor and pianist who suffered from retrograde amnesia towards the end of his life. Sachi says:
Clive Wearing is a British classical musician whose life was devastatingly impacted by a rare and severe form of memory loss. The profoundly beautiful part of Clive’s story is that his wife Deborah remained a constant in his life – the deepest of connections…almost instinctual, that despite his memory resetting every few seconds allowed him to always seek comfort amongst his fragmented existence. Inspired by his story we created ‘7 Seconds’, exploring the divine beauty in a love so deep, one that endures all the ebbs and flows of life.
Haunting and ethereal themes weave into the very sounds in this EP – it is a mesmerising tour de force that serves to emphasis the vitality and creativity of Sachi, who shows no fear in exploring a kaleidoscope of colours of sonic invention, while injecting poetry and lyricism into the very corpuscles of the music. The collaboration with AKINAT adds complex, subtle layers, a heavenly collision of talent.
The EP is out today and available at all the usual download and streaming sites and through the link below.
Feature Photograph: Yuto Kudo
