The first thing that came to mind when listening to this first-time vinyl pressing of Palomatic's sole outing, initially released on CD in 1995, is why Music From Memory weren't already involved. Then, of course, I remembered that 'Flutter', Trill's opening track, had recently featured on the second iteration of their Virtual Dreams compilation series detailing mid 90s Japanese electronic music, confirming my instincts remain sharp, even if my memory is a little more fallible... Feedback Waves' work acknowledges that there's more to explore here than that single track, and Trill does truly cover some ground, its creator, Koji Takahashi, clearly enthused by the possibilities that seem to charge through dance music in the last 20th century. It's hard to pin a sound to Palomatic, easier to instead align it to an era where genre codification was really beginning to fall apart, lost in a utopic haze of ambient techno, IDM, psychedelia, acid house and trance. If you're hearing something that now sounds dated you're at least halfway missing the point. In here i hear the bliss of discovery and a connecting of sensibilities in ways that are both culturally specific and universally engaging. No easy feat, whatever the context.
