Tatsuya Yoshida triple threat
Recently, I had the opportunity to see one of my most admired musicians, Tatsuya Yoshida, live. Well, actually, I had the opportunity to see him three times on three consecutive days. For the most part, I don't really enjoy live shows, but it was a rare occasion and I figured the annoying parts of normal concert crowds wouldn't be present at these shows. Anyway, it ended up being very pleasant and I wanted to tell you about it.
The first night was part of Club Goodman's ongoing GIGA NOISE concert series. Yoshida was performing alongside Ryuichi Masuda (Ruins), Kentaro Nakao (Number Girl, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her), Tatsuya Nakamura (The Stalin!), and Yoshimitsu Ichiraku (Acid Mothers, Kengo Iuchi!!!!), who basically played in different combinations in small sets, some improvised and some not. Let me say first off that this show was extraordinarily, supernaturally loud. Sometimes, of course, loudness is what you want, and this was certainly an occasion where I was looking for volume. When I walked through the venue, I thought that I had something stuck to my shoe, but it was just the vibrations from the floor tiles bridging up onto my soles, which was so weird.
Being that all the musicians were for the most part playing either bass or drums, it did sort of run together, but not in a bad way - I would say that it felt very cohesive, even if not altogether heterogynous. I will also say that, as the anecdote goes, most of the Japanese people who show up to shows like this are the most straight-laced salarymen you can imagine, which is very funny, although I also saw a number of very cute girls with outrageous haircuts who spent the entire show dancing like toddlers. Nakamura was a true treasure - he gave every part of his performance his all, like a star trying to kick-start its self-destructive supernova. He did sometimes wear himself out, at which point he would announce to the audience that he was tired and that the set would finish early, but honestly I think he earned it. Also, at one point Ichiraku pulled out a small quad copter drone which was controlled through hand gestures and connected in some way to a mixing board/pedal noise setup, with which he repeatedly attacked the crowd. Very charming. The only disappointment is that I didn't get to ask Ichiraku about Kengo Iuchi after the show, which is a major bummer but whatever. I saw this show being recorded, but I'm not altogether sure where the videos end up, whether streaming somewhere or on DVD. I'd love to find it.
The next night was at Jirokichi in Koenji, where Yoshida was performing with the Satoko Fujii Quartet. I was aware of this group through its members, but I'd never heard their stuff before in earnest. It's usually lumped into "free jazz," which isn't inaccurate, I don't think, but this isn't wild free improvisation. Rather, it's mostly compositional along the model of Ornette Coleman, for instance, with some strong Zeuhl influence (thanks to Yoshida) on occasion peeking through. In comparison to the previous night, this was not quite so loud, and the venue had a few more pleasant accommodations (i.e. stools). The bar menu also listed a pizza, which I was very curious about but didn't try. Instead, my obligatory bar order was spent on a cola. These are the exciting parts of a live show write-up, right?
The band was great. My favorite track of theirs was "Mountain Gnome," which involved all the players screaming wordlessly at one another in sequence. Fujii herself is a monstrous performer on the piano - not too different stylistically from Burrell on the album I reviewed below - and it was awesome to see her reaching into the piano to attack the strings directly, among other techniques. Yoshida, of course, did not disappoint. What makes him so amazing as a performer is how he manages to glide effortlessly between playing lead and support without ever really changing what he's doing. The entry fee came with a free live CD from some shows they played in Europe in April, which I will have to rip and add to Discogs soon, and after the show I was able to buy their CD Burning Wick which I haven't yet listened to but am looking forward to. I'll have to track down the rest of their discography soon.
The final performance of the week was also at Jirokitchi, where Yoshida was part of the group Missing Heads alongside Kazuhide Yamaji (I'm not sure what to say you might know him from, because I'm not sure if I actually knew him from anything in particular) and Mitsuru Tabata (of Anal by Anal era Boredoms). This performance was very much heby sike in the rich Japanese tradition, the three musicians forming a perverted power trio flowing dazzlingly between trope-ish rock, improvisation, and pure noise assault. Besides Yoshida, I'm say Tabata was the real treat here, approaching the guitar with incredible vigor, confidence, and violence. He did some very cool slide and ebow stuff which was heavenly. Of course, Yamaji and Yoshida were no slouches, either. I won't bullshit you by calling it some life-changing, extraordinary musical experience or whatever, but if you like the genre these are the kinds of performers and performances worth seeking out. Like the Giga Noise show, both of the Jirokitchi performances seemed to be recorded on video, but I'm still not sure where such things end up - not on their Youtube page, unfortunately! Oh well. I might seek them out later, and if I manage to find them I'll amend this.
Damnit, I should have tried that pizza... And damnit, I really should have asked about Kengo Iuchi...
Dave Burrell & Motoharu Yoshizawa - Dreams
This was one of those exploratory, totally-blind music purchases that are sometimes necessary to maintain the cosmic order. I'd been enjoying Yoshizawa's work with Kaoru Abe on Nord and I decided to check out some of his other albums. To my pleasant surprise, he had a few fairly-recent (and fairly-cheap) reissues out, so I picked this one up basically because I liked the cover art. Dave Burrell wasn't a name I knew offhand going in, but after listening I discovered I'd actually heard him on a few things before, though none that really had that much stylistically in common with this release. He's a hell of a pianist though, as his work on this album shows.
With that said, this is on the freer end of the jazz spectrum. The first track, "Red-Black," opens with some wild machine-gun fire by Burrell - Crazy Bus-esque, but definitely in a good way. One thing I realized listening to this album is how under-represented the piano is as a lead instrument in free jazz. I think part of that comes down to the fact that, without preparation, there's not a ton that can be done timbrely with the instrument, at least compared to the horns. Here, Burrell tries to make up for those deficiencies with the energy of his playing, and I think he does a pretty good job. My favorite moments from Burrell on this album are where you kind of get a reverse breakdown, where the free improvisation somehow collapses into traditional composition, tropes, and phrasing. While his playing has great frantic energy, I do wish that he'd actually gone a bit further in other ways - more dissonance, prepared stuff, detuning, something. What we have here is good, but I do feel it's held back a bit by a lot of the more "traditional" elements.
Yoshizawa's playing - which is what I bought the CD for - does not disappoint at all. The only real letdowns are that he doesn't get more time to shine, and that he seems a little low in the mix (but that could be an issue on my end). He's got a great way of finding moments in Burrell's playing to break himself in, and the stuff he plays is always really fun. There are a lot of moments on this album where it's like Yoshizawa is playing a funk riff while he's bleeding out or something - he's desperately, half-consciously trying to get this phrase out before he dies. That's really great. And the stretches where Yoshizawa takes the driver's seat are awesome - very different from Burrell's mania. Towards the end of the album, the two move into an interpretation of Strayhorn and Ellington's "Day Dream." There's a line in a Gilbert-Lecomte poem, something being "slick with the grease of dreams" - that's what we get here. And then there are these moments where we get the body of the bass played as percussion, almost like he's slapping the body with a bow or just his hand. There are a lot of surprises here, and it definitely keeps things on edge.
I also want to bring up the liner notes, in which Burrell talks about the political motivations and implications of his music, and some of his reasons for making this album in particular. I think in the age of digital music, very often we end up taking things in without much, if any, consideration as to the contextual or paratextual things around a recording. That is to say, the music is just "the music" and not part of anything else. While I don't think we need to marry our listening experience to accessory sentiments or any other supposed authority, those elements can be very edifying or at least interesting. I think it's always a pleasure, in situations like this, to see a little bit of what was going through the artists' minds as they made a recording, so the liner notes were very nice.
Overall, I enjoyed the album. I'll definitely be looking into more of Burrell's music, and hopefully picking up a few more Yoshizawa reissues when I get the chance. I don't think that a lot of people have heard of this album, but I think it's worth seeking out, even if it's just on Youtube or MP3.
Bloody Cum - Torture Music
I'm not sure if other people are like this, but one of my favorite things to do is go on Discogs and kindof wade through chains of album credits--so-and-so was in X band who put out Y album on Z label, which was owned by who or what who played bass with Visitor Q on a demo in 1979. That kind of thing. This is how I've found all kinds of great things--Vanity Records, Ahulabrum, Okami no Jikan--but one of the things that has stuck most in my mind, even years later, is Torture Music by Bloody Cum.
I don't need to give you a background on the group or the album. There isn't anything. Bloody Cum put out one solo tape (this one), a split with similarly-obscure group Graveyards, and appeared on a bunch of compilations. Ryuzi Kagaya, the driving force of the group if there ever was one, played in a couple hardcore groups, put out some tapes for some people, and seems to have been a big fan of Come Organisation and Iphar. The title "Torture Music," beyond being what my mother might call it, mirrors that of a Consumer Electronics tape. The artwork is a ukiyo-e swipe. The track titles are tired permutations of Sutcliff Jugend rendered in an English whose bluntness, more than anything, betrays that the speakers did not very well understand English. And the album itself consists of squealing, distorted synthesizers, harsh drum machines, what sounds like samples of children's music, and what might be fallaciously identified as vocals. Basically, it sounds like what you would expect if you were initiated at all.
This is a really wonderful, special tape. This is not to say that it's great, or maybe even good--it's no Hole in the Heart or something--but everything about this tape comes together exactly as one would want, exactly as such a thing should.
If you own this tape, there is perhaps a 75% chance that you are or were a member of Bloody Cum. Check Soulseek or something. If you were in Bloody Cum, please contact me. I am your biggest fan.
Tangerine Dream Syndicate - III Violins for III Stooges
I discovered this album on Yahoo Auctions while searching for a copy of Kosakai Fumio and Takahashi Ikuro's Of Dogstarman album (which is good, by the way). The Tangerine Dream Syndicate, a wonderful portmanteau of La Monte Young's Dream Syndicate and the seminal German electronic group, consists of Kosakai, Ryuichi Nagakubo (who I know from C.C.C.C. and G-UN, mostly) and Fukuoka Rinji (of Overhang Party), all playing strings and taking on similarly portmanteauified stage names paying tribute to both the Ramones and the god of Pythagorean scales, Tony Conrad. The album title, too, is also a seeming reference to Conrad's legendary "Four Violins"--besides, you know, Shemp Howard et al.
Musically, the album reminds me much more of the Taj Mahal Travellers than Tony Conrad, consisting of swirling, processed electric bowed strings, hanging around the same scales for an hour or so. That sounds like a critical evaluation, but I really do enjoy this sort of material. At a good volume in a dark room, it's very easy (and very enjoyable) to absorb yourself in the vibration. The music never really "develops" in the purest sense, but it certain mutates and iterates throughout. If you're a major Fluxus freak, this is probably for you.
While this is the only album released by Tangerine Dream Syndicate, you can find a lot of live performances on Youtube and the like, some dating to only a few years ago. I'd recommend the album first, and then if you're a fan to dive into those.
Keiji Haino & the Hardy Rocks - You're Either Standing Facing Me Or Next To Me
Keiji Haino is one of my absolute favorite artists, so whenever a new album of his releases I am always excited to hear it. This album, from 2022, is Haino's latest collaboration with Masami Kawaguchi's Hardy Rocks group, having already released an excellent EP (available here) in 2021. As with much of Haino's work, this album could be broadly categorized as "free(r) rock," but relative to Haino's massive catalogue this is fairly unique.
Like Haino's earlier Aihiyo project (also with Kawaguchi), Haino's work with the Hardy Rocks consists almost solely of covers, mostly pulled from 1960s American and British hits, though the performances on this album tend to hew closer to the originals than Aihiyo did. These are not to say that these are simple, straight covers--really, far from it. My favorite track on this album is "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," which takes the guts of the Stones' original and splatters them across the concrete, transforming the original groovy riff into something more akin to Swans' Cop. Truth be told, I've never liked the Stones' version too much because it felt fundamentally dishonest; you take one look at Mick Jagger and you know that he finds plenty of satisfaction in all areas of his life. When Haino belts out "I can't get no satisfaction," you really believe it. Other stand-out tracks for me are "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Summertime Blues," both of which allow some of the most mythical parts of Haino lore--that his first instrument was the harmonica, and that his first band was a Blue Cheer cover group with Takashi Mizutani--to bear a little fruit.
The strangest thing about this project as a long-time Haino fan is how consistent the performances are. That is to say, you can find numerous videos of Haino and the Rocks performing these songs, and all of the performances are practically identical--they're structured, consistent, and almost entirely without improvisation. While Haino has performed many consistent songs throughout his career (most notably Fushitsusha tracks like "ここ"), these were more like ruminations on set structures and ideas than note-for-note rehearsed performances. Perhaps this is due Haino acting mostly as a vocalist, perhaps he just wanted to do something different from his normal output, I don't know. Has he done something this composed since the Lost Aaraaf days? Any Haino experts out there that can shed light on this?
I should also say that while I've focused most of this review squarely on Haino, it's certainly not fair to discount or ignore the work of the Hardy Rocks. These guys are not just "Haino's backing band" or something--in fact, it seems to me that they're the primary musical force here, and that Haino is sortof a fellow traveler. The musicianship on this album is really nice--I like the subdued, lumbering drums, and the guitar tone is suitably angular and harsh. There are a few guitar solos here, and while they never verge into pure freakouts they're definitely never too straight or boring. I would have liked to hear Haino's guitar work on this album, but it probably would have overpowered the rest of the music unless he really held back, which would be missing the point.
Overall I really enjoy this album. I think that if you're relatively new to Keiji Haino and his style of music, this could be a good entry-point. If you're like me and already familiar, it's a wonderful mutation and change of pace. I would easily consider this one of my favorites of his massive discography.
I was able to buy this album through Tower Records in Japan, but if you're somewhere else in the world I'm sure it's possible to find through some western retailer or another. Check it out.
