During her eight years as the drummer in Osaka rock band Afrirampo, the artist known as Pikachu hardly ever sat still. Along with sister and guitarist Oni, the duo created frantic numbers packed with feedback and screaming, guided by a playful curiosity in what sounds their instruments and bodies could cough up. Pikachu hammered away at her kit while hollering into a microphone, and even their most slow-burning moments rarely allowed her space to rest. By the time Afrirampo disbanded in 2010, they had carved out a space next to fellow Japanese noise rockers (and friends) Boredoms and Acid Mothers Temple, while attracting attention from the likes of Sonic Youth and Lightning Bolt among others.
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It might be surprising for those who didn’t follow Pikachu’s career after Afrirampo to hear Ryu No Sumika, her latest solo album recorded under the moniker Pika. She’s always been part of various side projects even while Afrirampo barreled forward, most notably as Moon Mama, which sometimes featured cello player Hiromichi Sakamoto taking an electric drill to his instrument. Like many Japanese musicians, however, she changed her focus after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident. She helped start Taiyo 33 Osaka, a project focusing on exploring future of energy sources and just making people feel happy after the disaster. And she started playing the songs that would end up forming Sumika, songs that moved away from chaos in favor of reflective numbers that are happy to take their time getting anywhere.
The title track opens the album, and it offers a fake out aimed at anyone expecting a reversion to Afrirampo form. After nearly four minutes of build, Pikachu lets the song burst open in a rush of chirps, drum smacks and guitar squall. But this brief stretch ends up being the only real throwback to her dissonant heyday, as the bulk of Ryu No Sumika finds Pikachu operating against sparser backdrops. “Reazon” strolls forward via acoustic guitar and piano, while “Kara Wo Mitara” is pure campfire sing-a-long, accented by clarinet courtesy of David Duval-Smith.
Afrirampo, however, wasn’t just great because they could make clattering shriekfests better than most. They were an extremely fun band, unafraid to go off in whatever goofy direction appealed to them, including pretending to be various Australian mammals in concert. The sonic backdrop might be different, but Pikachu is still unafraid to follow whatever muse beckons her forward. Highlight “Mermaid” might be the closest Japan’s noise community comes to making a Broadway number, as Pikachu verbally skips among steel drums, at one point ditching words entirely in favor of tongue trills (adding to the theater vibe, several guests are credited as “performers,” their roles listed as “Merman” or “Merman’s friend”). Elsewhere, she spends seven minutes listing off different types of people, sometimes with vague political implications (“American” and “Iraqi” falling next to each other for example) and somehow making this potentially eye-rolling sentiment work thanks to her enthusiasm for the idea…along with drama-raising violin from Katsui Yuji.
Yuji is a good example of what else makes Ryu No Sumika work. Pikachu’s selection in contributors comprises an all-star cast of artists hailing from Japan’s improvised and experimental music communities, and many of their contributions add welcome tension. Sakamoto appears across Sumika, and though he never grinds power tools against his cello, he does add prickles of unease to otherwise direct songs such as “Onnanoko Yurayura”. Acid Mothers Temple mastermind Kawabata Makoto joins Pikachu, wonky singer-songwriter Tavito Nanao and sine-wave aficionado Sachiko M on “Sen”, Sumika’s bleakest cut. Saeki Mayumi—better known as Afrirampo’s Oni—even stops by to read poetry on an interlude track.
That moment feels important, a signal that the freewheeling spirit behind Afrirampo also inhabits Ryu No Sumika, just in a different shape. Sometimes Pikachu’s more patient approach falters, with several songs meandering and going on too long, but it also results in some deeply sweet and earnest moments. “Okaasan” opens with the line “Mother/ Yesterday mother died,” and from there Pikachu turns in her most passionate vocals on the album as the music swells around her, reaching the point where her singing approaches breakdown. It’s the peak emotional moment on an album where Pikachu matures musically without losing the youthful playfulness that led her to this point.