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The title of Foodman's new EP is Uchigawa Tankentai, which translates to "inner journey" in English.
The EP is distinctly different from his 2021 album Yasuragi Land, which was woody, easy going and hyper-rhythmic, themed around eating and resting in Japanese roadside food markets.
Here the atmosphere is almost cartoon-like, calm airy chords underpin a kind of automatic, spontaneous approach to composition and perhaps most oddly , Takahide sings in what he calls an 'old man' voice on two songs, which he first used as a voice actor for an animation. This naive feel is reflected in the childlike artwork too. Takahide says it's an attempt to apply a kind of unconscious 'free' way of making music which accepts whatever comes out, which he shapes later.
Lead single Pichi Pichi opens the EP with the lines in Japanese 'I want to eat delicious potatoes, I want to make them crispy and delicious', before dropping the listener into the frantic Soukou. It's like the Performance artist Paul Mcarthy directing an episode of 'In The Night Garden'. The next two songs Hoso Michi and Harjimari temper a little bit, with weird repetitive vocals (followed by shouting) and on Hajimari, rhythmic synths and call and response vocals that pinball around the speakers . Fuwari finishes things in a more structured form, rolling sounds and reverb create a tumbling hyper-rhythmic song.
