Most of the time, people don’t listen to an album front to back, start to finish. First listens are usually mixed, with the songs played differently to the order they’re placed, often a mixture of the third track being first and the fifth playing last. The shuffle feature is always turned on when going through any playlist, E.P, compilation and many don’t actually make the decision to turn it off; usually it doesn’t matter.
 

Yet, Ichiko Aoba’s latest album, Luminescent Creatures, implores listeners to experience its world–from its beginning to its end. Released February 28th, Luminescent Creatures is Aoba’s first album in five years, following her 2020 Windswept Adan. Her dreamy emblematic sound solidified in her most popular album travels to this year, in a current that only pulls you in more. Based on frequent trips to Okinawa where the Japanese artist spends time diving, she writes about the creatures she encountered and the natural world. That is the heart of Luminescent Creatures, a rippling ocean, its songs like seafoam.
 

The experience of Aoba’s story is meant to be told in order, from ‘COLORATURA’ to ‘Wakusei No Namida.’ In the first song, we are immediately drawn into a mesmerising world, treading into water, letting go of our concrete self. Utilising soft instrumentals such as harps and flutes as the main focus, ‘COLORATURA’ is laced with the artist’s soft whispers along with windy chimes. It is quick but purposeful, similar to a journey in a fairytale and everything comes to life as the piano begins.
 

From simply reading the titles inside the album, one immediately stands out along with being the shortest length; ‘‘24° 3′ 27.0″ N, 123° 47′ 7.5″ E’. Rather than giving listeners words to follow, they are handed coordinates to search. If you do look it up on Google Maps, you end up inside a lighthouse in Hateruma, the southernmost inhabited island in Japan. The track is a reimagining of a traditional folk song sung in the Hateruma dialect, this rendition containing low, thrumming bass and soft plucked strings.
 

While Aoba’s staple sound floats in every song, her wistful voice wrapped in a bouquet of soft chords, it distinctively stands out in the middle of Luminescent Creatures where we have entered the ocean and began to swim. Tracks such as ‘mazamum’ and ‘Aurora’ welcome us to let go of reality, through her pronounced yet breathy tone. The two most exceptional songs, ‘tower’ and ‘FLAG’ are less silvery, however they put you in a trance that’s difficult to stop you from playing them in a loop. ‘Tower’ is reminiscent of a fairy tale, Aoba’s voice dragging at the end of each word to prolong the fantasy. Every element to the song, piano to start, strings following shimmering jingles, create a new appearance in the story. Similarly, ‘FLAG’ evokes something powerful using only a guitar, Aoba and a hidden bass. It’s simple and stripped like a forgotten folk song, something that could be sung amongst friends and family.
 

To bring it back, ‘mazamum’s,’ behind its twinkles, is also composed of very faint coos and warped sounds of aquatic fauna. This is replicated in ‘Cochlea’ named after the part of the ear that involves hearing. No proper instruments, no voice, Aoba tells us again: take a moment, breathe. Listen. Shimmering chimes. Water. Murky whale calls. It’s the break in our exploration. Are we sinking deeper or beginning to break the surface?
 

‘Luciferine’ directly follows as the longest and most popular track. Starting quickly the instrumentals increase towards the chorus as a flute enters the mix of strings and piano, slowly crescendoing as the piano gets higher and higher. Then in a brief burst, life erupts. The quintessential chimes of the album come in along with an almost sonar-like echo. Aoba imitates the echo in ‘pirsomnia’ and ‘SONAR’ as part of the final three songs. In ‘pirsomnia’ her hums are staccatoed in time to the trilling ambient pad. In ‘SONAR’ she gains control over her voice, the echo lurking in the background alongside background vocals zipping in and out of the piano and faint ambient keys.
 

But everything fades to silence in the last fifteen seconds and the quiet is ruptured by wind in ‘Wakusa No Namida,’ the final track of Luminescent Creatures. Our head is out of water, but we still float. Aoba sings with the wind and only a guitar, her voice loud and finally firm. Inside the hopeful tone and atmosphere, the credits feel like they should begin to roll. The song ends a bit abruptly as she sings one line that’s left empty without another, departing from the last twenty-five seconds. Only wind remains, leaving us with the natural world, all bundled up in Ichiko Aoba’s hypnotising album.