KUUNATIC - Wheels of Ömon

The "Yellow Serpent" is the latest single from Kuunatic, the all-female Japanese post-everything trio. The track features a unique mix of atmospheric floating organ sounds, dubby bass lines, and hypnotic three-part singing—elements that blend together to create a mesmerizing vibe. Kuunatic is known for their experimental approach and "Yellow Serpent" draws from a wide range of influences, franging from traditional Japanese sounds to experimental rock and atmospheric electronics.

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"Grumbling psych played on a whirring blender of guitars, synths and traditional Japanese temple instruments“ -- The Wire

Kuunatic’s hotly anticipated 2nd album “Wheels of Ömon,” takes another adventuresome deep dive into their self-made fantasy mythology, proposing whole new worlds of psychedelic drama and ritual.

In addition to their core sonic palette of tribal drums, pulsing bass, atmospheric keyboards and grouped female vocals, the acclaimed Japanese psych-rock trio played an array of Japanese traditional instruments on "Wheels of Ömon." The result is a thrilling, kaleidoscopic album that brushes against tradition as it whirls into an other-wordly future.

First the facts. Kuunatic are the trio of Fumi Kikuchi on keyboards, Shoko Yoshida on bass and Yuko Araki on drums. All three of them also sing. They formed in 2016 and released an EP and 7” single before, in 2021, dropping their debut album, Gate of Klüna, on an unsuspecting public.

Here’s where things get unusual. Gate of Klüna was no ordinary album. Following on from their Kuurandia EP, it developed a mix of psychedelic garage and prog rock, ritual drumming, chanting female vocals, lush keyboard textures and traditional Japanese folk instruments to tell the mythic tale of the planet Kuurandia – a bold saga of magic, volcanoes and battle.

Now, with the release of their second album – Wheels of Ömon – Kuunatic have come to take us further down the rabbit hole.

Wheels of Ömon builds on the story of Kuurandia, its moon Klüna and its sun Ömon with more tales of prophecy, mysterious powers and magical healing lakes. Each of its eight songs pinpoints a specific moment from one 45-hour orbit of Ömon with atmospheric evocations of fleeting seasons and the rituals that accompany them.

Kuunatic’s imaginative flights of visionary fancy achieve the same kind of epic, science-fiction world-building as legendary French jazz-prog heroes, Magma. But their inspirations come from further afield. “The three of us listen to completely different types of music so our ideas and influences come from all different places,” they say.

In the case of Wheels of Ömon, a huge influence came from a residency at the PALP Festival in the alpine village of Bruson, Switzerland, close to the Vallée du Rhone and enclosed by mountains. Spending time there before recording the album in the Netherlands, Kuunatic found themselves inspired by the region’s rich history and breathtaking scenery.

“We create fantasy stories,” they say, “but it’s deeply influenced by historical events that happened on Earth. So, when we stayed in Switzerland, looking at the Alps and Vallée du Rhône, they made us imagine vast histories of grand Earth and times of several hundred million years ago. We also climbed one of the Alps to do a photo shoot and we learned more about the area. Through the experience, natural scientific facts were added to our concept, and our fictional world became clearer and more vivid. And we scattered the stories around this album.”

Perhaps it’s this majestic natural setting that has imparted to the new album a deep connection to folk traditions, to human stories, to the very roots of storytelling.

It’s a mood that manifests most powerfully in the album’s varied use of Japanese traditional instruments. The band explains: “This album begins and ends with sho, a Japanese traditional instrument consisting of 17 slender bamboo pipes that are used in gagaku, Japanese ancient court music.”

Throughout the album, Kuunatic also play chappa (hand-sized cymbals used at temple rituals or festivals), sasara (a percussion instrument of 108 wooden plates strung with a cotton cord), ryuteki (a flute used in gagaku), kagurabue (a flute used for Japanese traditional shrine music) ougidaiko (a fan-shaped hand drum), kokiriko (small bamboo stick instruments), and wadaiko (a huge traditional drum that has been used for rituals or festivals since ancient times).

“We would say the sounds of the flutes and drums we used have a very strong folk sense and atmosphere and they helped us to create a mysterious landscape,” says Kuunatic. “Sasara and kokiriko are used for the oldest Japanese folk song called ‘Kokiriko Bushi’ as well, so the historical fact is also included in the album’s narrative. But we mixed those Japanese elements with all different musical cultures and ideas, so this is a fusion of ancient times and modern times, crossing borders to borders.”

One of the most daring and evocative inclusions on the album is the appearance, on the track ‘Kuuminyo,’ of vocalist Rekpo, a member of the marginalised and persecuted Ainu indigenous ethnic people of northern Japan. “We met her when she was touring with Oki, an Ainu music band,” says Kuunatic. “We played together in 2022 and kept in touch. Rekpo is also from Marewrew, an Ainu female vocal group that is on a mission to rebuild and hand down their traditional music of Upopo. They sing this during labours and rituals, and sometimes fortune telling, so we interpreted her as a prophet in our world.”

Voicing the character of a prophet of Klüna on ‘Kuuminyo,’ Rekpo sings the Ainu traditional song ‘Hanro’ with an intimate yet otherworldly resonance that’s surprisingly catchy. It’s just one of the many musical highlights of an album that charts a course from the chilly grandeur of opening track ‘Yew’s Path,’ through the ambient shimmer and ritual chants of ‘Mavya at The Lacus Yom,’ and the stark, insistent tribal rock of ‘Disembodied Ternion,’ to the whooshing galactic prog of ‚Halu Shanta.’

A sweeping tale of far-off worlds and strange civilisations performed by ritual rhythms, chanted vocals, throbbing electric bass and ancient folk instruments, Wheels of Ömon is like nothing you’ve heard before. Climb aboard and let Kuunatic take you on a trip to the edge of imagination.