The success acquired by the Japanese Ichiko Aoba in the last years of her career is striking, after almost a dozen records published behind her. Their streaming figures are amazing for an Environment-Folk artist and correspond to some of their most recent compositions, but they are no surprise given their fantastic beauty and inspiration in Studio Ghibli movies.
Live, the music of Ichiko Aoba becomes an experience that you want to recommend to all your friends and acquaintances. His voice, crystalline and pure, and his serene acoustic guitar chords, get him to be able to forget the outside world for an hour and a half recital, which lasted his concert on Monday in Barcelona. His fans can come from Otaku: maybe they have discovered Aoba’s music playing ‘The Legend of Zelda’.
His operator, the Parisian Julien detacche surprised the early of the paral·lel 62 with a noise showcase and ruthless glitch, very strident and playful, but also unexpected. In some points he even sang, looking like a phil the vertum of the pot. Armed with an electric guitar that did not hesitate to use to tear all sound at will, detached scared some attendees who preferred to retire and return at another time. However, he also fascinated others for his originality. Ichiko Aoba said later that he is “very crazy” and is true.
The choice of opening is not causal, because the contrast between the sound of both highlights the calm, serene, balsamic, almost domestic component, of the compositions of Ichiko Aoba, which throw the same of the classic chords of the bossa nova – like those of the initial ‘kororonosekai’ – than of the dream folk, this when Aoba does not touch the piano pulling the piano throwing The feeling that his music leaves is of magical realism, standing at a point between reality and dreams.
The concert is divided into three acts and the bis, but, most of the time, Aoba passes it quietly playing the guitar, sitting on her red throne, throwing her voice to fly with the most imaginable pure aerodynamics and an enviable control. Aoba presents his latest album, ‘Luminescent Creatures’ (2025), inspired by his experiences exploring the waters of the Ryūkyū Islands, but his show highlights his Folk and earthly facet, not so much environmental and mystical, when he crosses songs like ‘Sagu Palm Song’, ‘Wakusei not namada’, ‘Clockwork Universe’ or the jumping ‘Mr. Sun ‘, which closed the show.
At the microphone, singing, touching his guitar or the keyboard, Aoba stopped time; Every time a glass was heard falling to the ground or the grinding of a door opening, the sound of these objects seemed to be amplified. However, Aoba, sometimes, played with that ambient sound, imitating for example the sound of that door with his voice. His music contains a childish spirit and walking around the house, perhaps because Aoba is self -taught, and that same spirit wakes up in the public when Aoba plays the penguin of his song ‘Sayonara Penguin’, causing laughter of the audience. It does not surprise that her last albums are starred by a girl.
That daily humor also moves to the moments when Aoba speaks to the audience, in some cases, in a surprisingly skillful Spanish. Aoba bothers to challenge his audience in his language, although most of the time he addresses the public in Japanese and, when he tells the story of ‘Uta no Kehai’, that of two angry friends that she tried to reconcile, it uses gestures to communicate. This humor relieves the solemnity of the music that sounds on the stage and converts the concert of Ichiko Aoba into an unbeatable experience. In the end, a fan gives some sweet pastes, but the real gift is that of Aoba to the public.
