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Tag: satoko fujii ibeam

Trying to Keep Up With Pianist Satoko Fujii’s Grey-Sky Majesty



















Trouble Kaze Celebrate Deviously Fun Improvisation Tomorrow Night in Gowanus

Japanese-French quintet Trouble Kaze’s new album June is the antithesis of what you’d probably expect from a two-drummer ensemble (i.e. the careening new Brandon Seabrook record). It’s also probably not what most people would think a band with two pianos would sound like. It’s a medieval Shinto temple gone down the rabbit hole, a Calder mobile on steroids, and a very deviously playful excuse for some of the world’s great improvisers to have fun making their instruments sound like something other than what they are. That, or simply coaxing (or scraping, banging, pounding or blowing) sounds out of them that under usual circumstance they either aren’t supposed to produce, or aren’t exactly known to make.

It’s downright impossible to figure out who’s playing what throughout this five-part, completely improvised suite recorded just over a year ago, which explains the album title. Sounds roughly comparable to temple bells mingle with the occasional portentously muted piano chord way down under the lid, produced by either Satoko Fujii or Sophie Agnel. A disgruntled snort from a trumpet (Natsuki Tamura? Christian Pruvost?) interrupts squirrelly textures from somebody (probably Tamura, the shogun of extended technique trumpet) but also maybe either drummer Peter Orins or Didier Lasserre.

A motorik rhythm develops as the group coalesces a little – is that a woodblock? A trumpet valve? White noise and waterfalling percussion build a frantic, horrified web (that has GOT to be Tamura screaming through his horn…or is it Pruvost blowing into his through a plastic tube?). Who’s spinning the vacuum cleaner tubing through the air? Maybe nobody, but that’s what it sounds like in a few places.

What does it sound like otherwise? Looping train-track rhythms, dopplers, whistling sepulchral figures, frantically bustling trumpets, a church belltower gone berserk. a very stealthy helicopter, a kitten stuck in the back of David Gilmour’s amp, and Federico Mompou cleaning out his attic are all part of the sonic picture. The train goes through the tunnel…all of a sudden it’s out of the tunnel! Next stop is 4th Ave., which is where you get off the F or the R to go to I-Beam, where the band are playing the album release show tomorrow night, June 23 at 8:30 PM. Cover is $15.

The album – bits and pieces of which are up at Soundcloud and youtube –  is not for everybody, and Fujii’s signature lyricism is largely (and surprisingly) absent from this defiant celebration of joyful noise. For her symphonic take on improvisation, you need to hear her rapturously intricate, conversational Duet album with bassist Joe Fonda.