" data-original-title="" title=""> Ayumi Tanaka isn't kidding with this impressionistic title. The music here isn't very far removed from silence, and its ebbing and drifting has just the formlessness you'd expect from life at the bottom of a sea or lake. Pretty sparse and abstract even by ECM Records standards, it's not so much recognizable music as a piece of aural experimental theater.

Simple notes are just one tool among many here; Tanaka almost seems to plonk the piano strings as much as she actually hits keys, and she hits the keys for punctuating splashes of sound as often as she employs melody runs. Small bass plucks and light clatters from the percussion kit are used the same way, all the little bits of sound adding up to an endlessly shifting scape. Sometimes there could be creatures swimming through and darting in and out of the shadows; sometimes they just evoke the random flows and movements of the aquatic environment itself, seemingly aiming for as much restraint as possible. Vague as it is, the amorphous experience never gets any less immersive and vivid throughout.

Olga Konkova Trio
Open Secret
Losen Records
2021

Maybe this particular secret is indeed out there openly, but whatever it is, it still feels like a mystery even once you hear it.