Though it's safe to say the Western world was largely introduced to Eiko Ishibashi via her collaborations with the mercurial genius Jim O'Rourke, there's much to recommend in her solo oeuvre. A multi-instrumentalist, Ishibashi is as innovative a composer as she is a session musician, challenging listeners with non-traditional arrangements and atypical harmonies. Take "coda", with its flurry of jazz beats thrashing against her vocal urgency before settling into a lull, or the haunting orchestration of "shadow". At their best, her experiments result in music that's intimate and inspirational.