At Her Open Door – FLIR [Chinabot]

Chinabot‘s originality lies in an artistic philosophy that mixes traditional oriental culture with the most avant-garde electronic music. The result can be appreciated both in its sound environment and in its visual aesthetics, directly linked to any Asian art format.

At Her Open Door is an experimental music project started in 2007 by Japanese artist Taiki Kobayashi. His music is characterized by crossing various genres such as dubstep, experimental, IDM, new wave, Traditional asian instrumentations, new age, and 80s synth wave.

A glitching, heavy darkness pervades FLIR, the new album from Tokyo-based artist At Her Open Door, to be released on Chinabot. Combining uniquely diverse elements – dubstep, traditional Chinese instrumentation, and progressive rock, among others – FLIR is a whirlwind journey through fruitful experimentation, creating a world of jagged sonic edges and frenetic beats along the way.

Taiki Kobayashi of At Her Open Door started out in progressive rock and hardcore bands, and now describes his work as “a fusion of Asian traditional instruments and 80s synths for a modern approach.” With FLIR, wobble bass and jungle add new textures to his precise, melodic compositions, which also make use of the characteristic bell sounds of the Peking Opera.

Tracks like CINA display this approach, blending up a melody that could have come from an 80’s sci fi soundtrack with Chinese instrumentation and wobble bass, for an aggressive, thumping blitz on the senses.

“FLIR is an acronym for “forward-looking infrared” and is intended to mean the result of detecting something hot,” says Kobayashi, referring to his exploratory musical process. “In composing the songs, I have been focused on reproducing and shaping the sound that I want to hear now.”

Lately, he has also been inspired by electronic music from Depeche Mode and Yellow Magic Orchestra. “What I valued in creating FLIR was the fusion of the esoteric and aggressive atmosphere of that music with the 80s romanticism that I have explored in the past,” he says.

Release date: October 5th, 2022.