★Improvised Music From Japan
Time service
Over the past few years, alto sax player Masahiko Okura has led an astonishingly full and varied musical life. Active as a soloist, as leader of the jazz-rock band Gnu, and as a member of the improvisational trio Bject (with Tetuzi Akiyama and Utah Kawasaki), he also collaborates with many other improvisers, including Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, Ami Yoshida, Axel Dörner, Alessandro Bosetti, Werner Dafeldecker, and Günter Müller. With the recent addition to his repertoire of two more instrume…
s/t
gorgeous 4cd set (each copy packaged in a different cloth bag) by kazuo imai’s marginal consort - a collective formed in one of takehisa koshugi’s classes at bigakko art school in 1975 which continues to this very day...the lineup includes imai (a student/assistant of masayuki takayanagi’s who later formed east bionic symphonia (essentially an earlier version of this very group with chie mukai) and eventually joined taj mahal travelers and takayanagi’s new direction unit), yasushi ozawa (a membe…
Aluk
Vienna artist Klaus Filip plays music using nothing but sine waves produced with 'lloopp,' an improvisation software program he invented and continues to refine. Toshimaru Nakamura makes music simply by controlling a mixing board's internal feedback, inputting no external sounds. Two artists with highly individual playing methods, they came together to create this album of improvisational works. Two of the three tracks were recorded in a Tokyo studio in May of 2005, when Filip came to Japan alon…
La drache
Alto sax player Katsura Yamauchi was born in Oita, Kyushu, in 1954. In 2002 he quit his company job to become a full-time musician, and each year since '03 has traveled to Europe and strengthened his ties with musicians in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and so on. In the process he met and found a kindred spirit in one of France's leading improvisers, soprano/sopranino saxophonist Michel Doneda (who happens to be the same age as Yamauchi). They've played together many times since…
Sieves
Kato Hideki: electric bass and bass synthesizer; James Fei: oscillators, filters, spring reverb, contact mike, and miscellaneous electronics. Based in New York City since 1992, Kato Hideki -- a former member of Otomo Yoshihide's group Ground-Zero and Tony Buck's band Peril -- has been involved in myriad projects in America and Europe, including Fred Frith and Ikue Mori's Death Ambient, and a multimedia collaboration with Nicholas Collins. Taiwan-born James Fei studied with Alvin Lucier and Antho…
In case of fire take the stairs
Kaffe Matthews (laptop), Andrea Neumann (inside piano), Sachiko M (sinewaves, contact microphones). Recorded live in Tokyo, 3/17/02. Although I and II include two and three tracks, respectively, each is a single work. They are divided into multiple tracks for listeners' convenience. Kaffe Matthews created her sound by live-sampling and processing her own and the other musicians' sounds as they played.
Across the desert
European free jazz/free improvisation pioneer Han Bennink (drums) made this studio recording with Kazuo Imai (guitar) in Tokyo in May of 2002. Imai, who in the '70s studied with Masayuki Takayanagi and Takehisa Kosugi, currently performs both on his own and with the annual five-member collective improvisation project Marginal Consort. Across the Desert contains nine duo pieces. Imai plays both acoustic and electric guitar while Bennink delivers strong, constantly changing rhythms. Here are two m…
Stereo bugscope 00
Starting with her work in After Dinner in the '80s, up to her current activity as a soloist and in projects like the female trio Hoahio, and Yesterday's Heroes, with Terre Thaemlitz, Haco has long been the reigning songstress of avant-garde music. But she isn't only a highly acclaimed vocalist and composer/lyricist; in recent years she's been exploring areas unrelated to vocalizing or pop melodies, with projects that focus on the sounds that surround us in our daily lives. One of these is View M…
Lunch in Nishinomiga
In the trio album Lunch in Nishinomiya, Haco (contact microphones, oscillators, effects) joins forces with two leading Montreal improvisers known for their innovative playing-Diane Labrosse (sampler) and Martin Tétreault (turntable, surfaces, small electronics). When Labrosse and Tétreault came to Japan in 2003, they found a kindred spirit in Haco. The three recorded an improvised music session at Haco's studio in Nishinomiya (near Osaka), and later completed the construction and mix through an …
Tiger thrush
The long-awaited solo album of amazing 'howling voice' performer Ami Yoshida is finally here. It's hard to believe Yoshida's sounds, with their myriad nuances, are those of a human voice -- they could easily be mistaken for minute digital noises. Over the past several years, this artist's work -- including projects with Yoshihide Otomo (guitar, turntable); and the duos Cosmos, with Sachiko M (sinewaves), and Astro Twin, with Utah Kawasaki (analog synthesizer) -- has garnered considerable attenti…