Home Is Everywhere and Nowhere at Once by Takeo.k

For fans of Talk Talk, Disco Inferno, Gastr Del Sol, the many facets of dub, and those brief moments after you wake up when you forget that you’re in a new place, Home Is Everywhere and Nowhere at Once by Takeo.k assesses our ideas of belonging, using an experimental electronic sound to unpack the immigrant experience. Snippets from the artist’s origin and destination swirl together into a crowded ambient environment steadied by a soothing, powerful voice, the subject facing the challenge of becoming a permanent, stable home for themselves. The outside world continues to influence the subject through field recordings, musical samples, and acoustic instruments, but the core of the record runs through a particular production style which metabolizes all inputs into pure aesthetic unity. Within this enigmatic ambient entity, we find a subconscious stable enough to regulate enormous external change, weathering culture shock through the self-knowledge which allows our speaker to find a role in their new home, a skill which could allow any of us to stay true to ourselves in a world hell-bent on exerting influence.