By Michael J. West | Published November 2026
From Such A Blue Sky defies you to discern what, if anything, of it is composed and what, if anything, is improvised. So do I. For that matter, the music that Danish guitarist Jakob Bro and Japanese multi-percussionist Midori Takada make defies most descriptions beyond “melodic,” “delicate” and “atmospheric.” Well, OK: “beautiful,” too.
If anything, genre is the least helpful category of description here. The opening “Lullaby for You” begins as a folk-like acoustic guitar melody (with bell and piano fills), then dissolves into a gauzy sonic dreamscape. “Breatharian” begins as a gauzy sonic dreamscape, Takada’s marimba and Bro’s barely-there strumming backgrounding flutes and whistles of unknown provenance and, eventually, a variety of softly struck gongs. The title of “Falling and Fragmentation” is actually the opposite of what happens in the track itself, which opens upon a vague firmament of guitar, marimba, cymbal and (perhaps?) tympani fragments that, oh, so slowly, over an eight-and-a-half-minute run time, rises and emulsifies into … a vaguely coherent drone. The denouement, however, is that the finely and gorgeously sculpted “A Voice Calling in the Sea,” closing the album with malleted cymbals punctuating convergent guitar and piano ostinati.
These, however, are the collective envelope that binds the nearly 12-minute centerpiece, “Unendable Dream.” It’s a true epic, with Takada’s slowly rising gongs creating a foundation that bells then accentuate—like a noh theater diorama—over more than five minutes before a lilting waltz bed takes over, with what sounds like overdubbed electric guitars playing in counterpoint while metallic sounds interpolate. It’s like the bright orb at the center of the Milky Way: an ethereal, dissolute form, but a form nonetheless, full of splendor and wonder.
