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Sunao Inami
Used Up and Empty

Cave Studio / Electr-Ohm

Posted: Friday, December 01, 2006
By: Erica Anderson

Sunao Inami is an artist and businessman from Kobe, Japan, who runs his own record label as well as composes his own music. Sunao recently released his fourth album Used Up and Empty, a live album recorded in Belgium at Ric's Art Boat during Sunao's tour from earlier this year. Used Up and Empty is a complex mix of breakbeat, abstract noise, and dark electro music. Easy listening music this is not. Abrasive and tuneless are words that easily come to mind to describe Sunao Inami's music. The album is completely devoid of melody, which made listening to the album more difficult to digest. The focus here is on the complex electronic beats. The album begins on a more subtle note; the clicks and cracks are subtle, but as the CD progresses on, the beats become more aggressive and tedious. The pace of the music really picks up on the fifth track, "Marker 7," and never lets up. On "Marker 7," the beats take on a tribal sound, giving the music an uplifting spiritual sensation for the listener, but after a few minutes, the beats become a chore to listen to due to repetition. The biggest flaw with Used Up and Empty is repetition. Everyone song on the album sounds like the previous track and the lack of melody doesn't help. The majority of the album sounded nothing more than a jackhammer pounding incessantly into the ground, making it virtually impossible to enjoy the music. Used Up and Empty doesn't feel like there are 11 songs; it sounds more like one extended song that lasts for nearly 50 minutes. 49 minutes of aggressive, monotonous breakbeats can be overwhelming for anyone who does not listen to drum & bass music. Fans of IDM will certainly appreciate Sunao Inami's music with his array of frantic breakbeats and static washes, but for everyone else this is simply noise.