A collection of songs that don’t insist on being heard — but reward those who listen.

Ichiko Aoba’s Luminescent Creatures doesn’t introduce a new world so much as trace the outlines of what remains after one fades. A kinda-sorta sequel to 2020’s Windswept Adan, an album that imagined a girl exiled to an island where music and nature commingled, this new work lingers in the afterimage. “What would be left?,” Aoba asks in release notes accompanying the album, which comes out on Friday, Feb. 28. The answer unfolds gradually — through drifting melodies, arrangements that shimmer and dissolve, and a sound that feels untethered from time.

Aoba’s music has always existed outside rigid categories. A singer, composer, and classical guitarist, she moves fluidly between folk, orchestral, and ambient traditions, drawing from influences as disparate as Django Reinhardt’s intricate jazz phrasing and Taeko Ohnuki’s city pop elegance. She’s worked with Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto and composes with a Van Dyke Park-ian glee. Over the past 15 years, she has expanded from spare voice-and-guitar recordings to fully realized sonic landscapes, shaped just as much by the cinematic storytelling of Disney and Studio Ghibli as by her classical training.

You can understand the magical realism that drives Aoba’s muse by watching her new video for the song “Sonar.” With a sweeping narrative cascading through its 4 minutes, the short film is a brilliant distillation of her work.

With longtime collaborator Taro Umebayashi, Aoba constructs Luminescent Creatures with a balance of restraint and expansiveness. Her classical guitar remains central, but it now floats within a wide-ranging palette: orchestral strings, harp, flickering synths and chimes that hover at the edges of the sound. The folk song “24° 3′ 27.0″ N, 123° 47′ 7.5″ E,” which she absorbed through time spent with musicians on Hateruma, stands out as a quiet yet striking moment. Its title references the coordinates of a lighthouse, a symbol of guidance and distance — much like the album itself, which seems to reach outward while holding something luminous at its core.

Aoba has described her creative process as a kind of misogi, a purifying act where even painful memories can be confronted and transformed. “Even if it’s a painful experience that makes you want to close your eyes, there is something you can grasp by digging deeper,” she told 15 Questions. That instinct carries through Luminescent Creatures, which explores absence and longing without ever feeling weighed down by them. “Tower” sways like a minor-key waltz, piano rippling beneath her voice, while “SONAR” moves in gentle waves that mirror sound traveling through water. “A seven colored droplet trembles awake,” she sings in Japanese. “The world could end tomorrow yet, still/Beyond the darkness/A glimmer of first song.”

On Wakusei no Namida, Aoba’s classical guitar moves in quiet nocturne-like patterns as soft electronics rise and dissolve around her, each element lingering in the air before fading.

Aoba’s music has always thrived in the in-between, and Luminescent Creatures is no different. It moves between night and dawn, land and open water, memory and imagination. It doesn’t call for attention but instead rewards patience, waiting for the listener to meet it on its own terms.

In the spring, Aoba will embark on an American tour that will find her at the Wiltern for two nights, April 26-27. The complete itinerary is below.

Thu. April 17 – Honolulu, HI @ Hawaii Theatre
Sat. April 19 – Vancouver, BC @ Chan Centre
Sun. April 20 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Mon. April 21 – Seattle, WA @ The Moore
Wed. April 23 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Oakland
Sat. April 26 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern [with Wordless Music Quintet]
Sun. April 27 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern [with Wordless Music Quintet]
Tue. April 29 – Scottsdale, AZ @ Scottsdale Center
Thu. May 1 – Denver, CO @ Paramount Theatre
Sat. May 3 – St. Paul, MN @ Fitzgerald Theatre
Tue. May 6 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
Wed. May 7 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
Fri. May 9 – Detroit, MI @ Masonic Cathedral Theatre
Sat. May 10 – Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre
Mon. May 12 – Boston, MA @ Berklee Performance Center
Wed. May 14 – New York, NY @ Kings Theatre [with Wordless Music Quintet]
Sat. May 17 – Philadelphia, PA @ Miller Theatre
Sun. May 18 – Washington, DC @ Warner Theatre
Thu. May 22 – Mexico City, MX @ Teatreo Metropolitan