BLESSED PLANET by NBOJ TESPO

Japanese drummer and producer Takafumi Okada has had his hands in several projects over the last 12 years or so, and, like with his music, patterns emerge: his discography is full of DIY sounds, an unconventional attitude to production, and an ability to create tension and mystery with layered polyrhythmic grooves.

Takafumi is well known as the former drummer of goat, the experimental band from Osaka. His mathematical lock-grooves helped to zone-out minds and levitate audiences between 2017-2023, notably on goat’s third album “Joy In Fear”. Prior to that, Takafumi was playing in his trio The Noup, a formation of guitar, bass, drums and synths that found their own balance of no wave and trippy homemade sounds over the course of several releases since 2013.

Under his Manisdron alias, Takafumi has a clutch of weighty records and tapes. In particular a 12” EP and double LP “Body of Void” on US label L.I.E.S. demonstrates his high-octane, industrial style, made on hardware and a drum kit. There are also Manisdron tapes of glitchy scatterbomb electronics to be discovered on Takafumi’s own label Cathodic.

Takafumi’s new project Nboj Tespo is another intriguing offshoot. Warm electronic sounds are layered with polymetric rhythms across nine tracks, and arranged in such a way as to bring listeners into a hypnotic dance state. Takafumi combines his Elektron Machinedrum, Boss delay pedal and Novation Bass Station 2 at his home studio, to produce minimal grooves that grow into fully-fledged creatures and take on a life of their own.

While Manisdron is one side of Takafumi’s solo output - that is, industrial and machine-like rhythms made with a real drum kit - Nboj Tespo flips that premise, and creates organic songs with a drum machine. The artist name also hides a clue: shift every letter of Manisdron down a notch and we find ourselves on the other side of the alias - the same identity but from a different viewpoint.

If the viewpoint of Nboj Tespo has a theme, it’s one of finding positivity in life, or a mysterious sense of satisfaction in the everyday. That makes “Blessed Planet” a perfect companion, for both the inside and the outside world.