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Live Document 2003-2005 PSF PSFDV-3 DVD £13.99 Exias-J, The Experimental Improviser's Association Of Japan, are a group of young second generation experimental musicians who take up where sound thinkers like Masayuki Takayanagi, Kaoru Abe and Group Ongaku left off, focussing and redirecting their prodigious energies with the use of sonic binds, game plans, directed improvisations and sound-gorged group exchanges. The collective are centred around guitarist Hideaki Kondo, a ferocious player who deals in the same kind of feedback-delivered satori as Takayanagi, and drummer Naoto Nishizawa, whose liberated approach to time sacrifices none of the punctuating fury of rock drumming. This new region-specific DVD bundles three professionally filmed performances that extend particularly focussed vibrations into long, sustained investigations of various modes of freedom. Includes live at Classics, Tokyo July 21st 2004, live at Tonic, New York October 30th 2003 and live Grapefruit Moon, Tokyo April 17th 2005. 142 minutes. |
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Son's Scapegoat SIWA SCD002 CD £8.99 Beautifully presented in a colour screenprinted gatefold sleeve, Son's Scapegoat documents a wild March 2005 summit between legendary Japanese percussionist Sabu Toyozumi and PSF/Bishop recording artists Exias-J. Toyozumi casts a fearsome shadow over the entire history of liberated musical thought in Japan, playing on sessions alongside titans like Masayuki Takayanagi, Kaoru Abe, Keiji Haino, Takashi Mizutani (Rallizes) and Peter Br&#ouml;tzmann. Exias-J have long been committed to forging a culturally-specific response to contemporary breakthroughs in spontaneous composition, and as such they've spent the past decade or so pushing post-Takayanagi mass projections into whole new configurations of tomorrow. This is their best set to date, with Toyozumi harvesting huge waves of time while twin electric guitars chew on rubble, live electronics let loose huge rainbows of crank and cello, piano, trombone and flute lend the whole schlup a kind of big-band elegance. Indeed, the flute/guitar trade-offs here sound most like the kind of post-blues moves that Sonny Sharrock and Byard Lancaster laid down on Lancaster's great Vortex side, It's Not Up To Us. Who'd have thunk it? These guys, obviously. Highly recommended. Limited edition of only 500 copies. |
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Structures PSF PSFD-168 CD £13.99 Debut PSF solo album from Hideaki Kondo of Japanese improvisers Exias-J. Here Kondo plays 'gut guitar' and '10-string gut guitar' both solo and accompanied by Michio Karimata on flute, Jun Kawasaki on bass and Osamu Nomura on percussion. There are moments here that match the rolling majesty of Robbie Basho's thought circa The Falconer's Arms while others - specifically the bloodied interpretation of Masayuki Takayanagi's "Herdsman's Pipe Of Spain" - match avant fury with tactile string theory and moments of haunted, baroque space. One of the best sides to come out of this collective to date. |
