"«Maybe you remember irish from one of our first releases, tube008. More than a year ago, we wrote: «irish's Understandings is a beautiful EP that sets the melancholic tone right from the beginning». Well, we can easily pick up where we left. irish's tone is still sad and melancholic much like it was months ago, but he has developed his style since then. He has cleaned up his sound a little and invited two of his friends to sing for this release.
'The Man of Dead Letters', featuring singer Mississippi Sunburst, is a childish-like song, with english male lyrics over a slow and heavy bass beat, soft keyboard drones and an insistent, deliberately untuned guitar. A mellow start for a 'Pretty Album'.
'Rave at Mt. Eboshi' is the first of the two instrumental pieces. Its strong IDM architecture pushes up the beat some notches and adds some cut-and-paste voice sampling for a great Sheffield feel. Did you mentioned 'Old School' and 'Warp' in the same sentence? Yep, rightly so.
'Theme of Emi', featuring japanese artist Tsurutin, is a beautiful little jewell to keep next to the heart. It balances some sweet girly lyrics - spoken in japanese - adorned by some really sad keyboards with more classic, dissonant and round IDM beats, to create a distant nostalgic effect. really special, this one.
'Curtain call for The Man', the last instrumental piece, closes this release with a nice touch: A kind of a lo-fi hip hop tune, with bubbling effects, lots of vinyl scratchin' and a weeping cello. Priceless stuff.» - Pedro Leitão" (From the Test Tube's release page)

"the first release by -n has a sense of cohesiveness and maturity that many long-running labels never attain. the cohesiveness is provided by the constant of noise; the music is more brightly colored than the typical browns, blacks and greys than the notion of noise typically suggests. the use of noise as music is about breaking conceptions. a ghost of an echo can become musical and arrest us in a way a note from a guitar cannot. we cannot listen expecting the sounds we have grown used to - we listen as if hearing music for the first time. we listen to the sounds we have been taught to ignore all our lives. we become aware of these sounds, these aural shapes, timbres and shadows. may we never walk through an empty hall, a quiet garden or a busy street the same way again.
andrey kiritchenko kicks it off with some itchy goodness in the form of 'spreading comets.' brooding melodic suggestions create a mood, a sense of space that begins the journey. c6 starts your head nodding with 'dusty link,' proving along the way that noise and melody are not mutually exclusive. following is a fine minimal dance choon by klitekture records' lod. 'esponja 5' is minimal at its glitchy best, a track perfectly at home on the dancefloor and on headphones.
the dictionary describes coeval as 'contemporary,' but we think their music is the sound of tomorrow. think of the movie bladerunner sounding as gritty as it looked and you have coeval's 'fluido y neutro,' a track that is as much a vision as it is a song. muffrare continues that vibe with strong percussive workout in 'itt.' fracture noise pulls us firmly back onto the dancefloor with 'esc,' a track that is pure evocation. it is rife with suggestions of memories, spectres of feelings.
by the time g_n44f's 'conjunction' is playing, you are firmly within the realm of noise, listening not only to a vision, but listening to something near you that you can't quite define. irish pulls the tempo back down with 'mic check,' a steady and relaxing track that lulls you while the voice keeps your ears perked. shalma- edges into deep house territory with 'foppish-foppish'. don't get too comfortable, tho - shalma- throws a curve before the end. the release closes with masaya sasaki's 'major7,' a meditation on music and noise that provides closure to this journey while leaving the door ajar for what may lie ahead. - arp laszlo" (From the -N's release page)

"«Japanese artist Irie Yoshihisa - irish's real name - was born in Nagasaki, and makes music using a computer since 2001. He has previously released an EP for MiMi, which is an also Portuguese based Netlabel, called 'Killaz Sleep Peacefully'. Before that, he has done a CD-R: 'Manufactures', in 2003.
irish's Understandings is a beautiful EP that sets the melancholic tone right from the beginning. 'Coma and Pray', a down-to-earth IDM track, opens the set, delivering round punchy beats a-plenty, completed with angel-like, almost childish voice sampling and a deep ambient layer on top. Resembles much of WARP's early material, back from the distant nineties. Short but effective, and very enjoyable.
'Square and Triangle', being less emotional and more scientific, features some skewed beats and clicks, nice music-box keyboards and reverse/forward structure movements. What comes to mind after listening to this track for while, is our summer vacations in the countryside, watching the birds, the trees and the sky, joyfully away from the city's concrete buildings, dirty pavements and dark roads, which is not what it sounds at first approach: a cold and distant laboratory theme.
irish closes this release with an improv jam, between his quirkiest laptop electronics and Kazuya Iwamoto's acoustic guitar, entitled 'We played for about one hour but only 20 minutes had been recorded.'. This long take extends under our feet gentle guitar and click'n'cut electronic effects and sine waves. I call this 'psychedelic folktronica', but you can call it whatever you wish. IDM and Improv Electronics fans will love this one.» - Pedro Leitão" (From the Test Tube's release page)