Tenki

View of Orbiting Man (Future Appletree)
By Evan Solochek

Chicago’s Tenki blends the basic clean guitar sound with a complex interweaving of horns, keyboards, violas, banjos, and even a koto (a thirteen-string Japanese instrument) to create a tightly arranged and intensely interesting indie-pop sound reminiscent of Built to Spill. The music on View on an Orbiting Man is atmospheric and emotional, yet extremely structured. Tenki is able to achieve this seemingly mutually exclusive relationship because their music is built on the foundation of extraordinary hooks and choruses, as opposed to the dreary on-and-ons of most ambient music.

There’s no real highlight of the album, which can be seen both as a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, the album is not simply a single surrounded by filler. While on the other hand, the album sort of blends all together, and I found myself more than a little bored by the end. However, either way, in the end, there is little doubt that Tenki put together a musically explorative and inventive album that is a portent of an extremely bright future.
(PO Box 191 Davenport, IO 52808)