According to Ichiko Aoba’s philosophy, the natural world and humankind are tightly intertwined: “Our bodies are made of those same materials that make up the natural world,” she tells Crack. “The only difference is how they’re put together.” In 2020, the Japanese folk singer-songwriter bounced around Japan’s Ryukyu Archipelago conducting field research. She compiled her findings and experiences into her album Windswept Adan (2020). The album follows a story in which a young girl is banished to the fictional island of Adan by her family, who fear her prophetic abilities. She encounters the island’s inhabitants who throw a celebration for her. The story ends as she falls asleep under the adan tree, her body reincarnating into a blooming display of various organisms. 

For Aoba, the ending left her with more questions than answers. “It began when I started wondering what happened after the protagonist of Windswept Adan disappeared along with the music of the island’s inhabitants,” she recalls in an interview with Psychic Hotline. “What would be left?” Titled after the 2020 record’s closing track, Luminescent Creatures is Aoba’s continuation of the story Windswept Adan wove nearly five years prior.

Gentle ripples turn to powerful currents. Aoba opens the floodgates of Luminescent Creatures with “COLORATURA,” taking the plunge into its vibrant world. Aoba was particularly drawn to the ocean during her research. She’d go diving in the waters of the southern Ryukyu Archipelago without any gear. “When you’re diving, you can only go as far as your breath lasts, so death is right around the corner,” she tells The Fader. “It’s a fearful experience, but it’s so beautiful at the same time. Sometimes I feel like I’m looking at the beautiful vision right before I die.” Then, the ship sets sail. The waters are calm, but be wary. The flute blows the wind, the piano carries the waves, and the strings rise and fall with the tides.

Next stop: “24° 3’ 27.0” N, 123° 47’ 7.5” E”, the title of the second track on Luminescent Creatures. Search the coordinates on a map, and you’re led to a small lighthouse on the island of Hateruma. The song is Aoba’s take on a centuries-old Hateruma folk song, her voice accompanied by the indigenous Okinawa sanshin instrument. Aoba first made her visit to the island back in 2013, doing research for an acting role. Maybe it was the island’s extensive coral reefs that drew her in or the close connection with nature the people of Hateruma have. Aoba kept coming back, and the population of Hateruma reciprocated. They invited her to the local festivals and, eventually, taught her the song. 

Those human interactions are vital to Aoba’s theory of bioluminescence. Mesmerized by glowing organisms, she carefully traced the oceanic timeline back to the first life forms. “At some point, they noticed that in one form or another they were alone, and so started to light up as a courtship ritual,” she shares her findings. “But it was also a way for them to communicate with other single-cell organisms, saying, ‘I’m here,’ ‘I love you,’ or ‘I want to be loved by you.’ In a lot of ways, humans still do that.” 

A distant, echoic twinkle opens to the soft murmurs of Aoba on “pirsomnia.” Light is everywhere. It’s illuminated by the creatures below, the jellyfish and plankton sending signals. “When I stare into the seemingly bottomless black depths of a trench,” Aoba shares, “I occasionally see the blinking light of some rainbow-colored lifeform.” It’s a feeling of pure awe, like seeing a whale dive through the waters. Luminescent Creatures’ emulation of the natural world lies in its ability to recreate non-musical sounds, like a person’s heartbeat, rippling waters, and twinkling stars. Aoba works a real-life whale call in “惑星の泪” (Wakusei No Namida) that she recorded while diving in the Amami islands.

There’s a special magic that comes with Ichiko Aoba. You don’t need to understand Japanese to know what she sings. You don’t need to take a trip to Japan to know where she comes from. It’s the sounds her music creates—how the instruments, the synthesizers, and the voices come together—and the emotions they evoke. At the end of the last track on Luminescent Creatures, the synthesizer reaches a frequency that the human ear cannot distinguish. “We cannot hear this, but maybe it could be heard by a whale,” Aoba contemplates. “Luminescent Creatures isn’t an album made for humans, it is made for all living beings.”