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Kuwayama
Kiyoharu & Masayoshi Urabe / From the Abolition
Port 2010 (CDR USA) |
Jun
2010 -Songs From Under the Floorboards - edition of
100 copies
URABE Masayoshi : alto saxophone,chains,metal joints,bell
KUWAYAMA Kiyoharu : cello, viola, metal junk, wood sticks,
etc
Recorded at No 20 warehouse
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A
gripping, devastatingly patient, and emotionally raw
improvisation for cello, saxophone, and metal chains
recorded live at Kuwayama Kiyoharufs cavernous warehouse
space in Nagoya, Japan. Rather than an event-driven,
linear performance, From the Abolition Port is a single
structure, with the ghostly presence of the space
acting as either a third performer, or perhaps as
the composer. The music is violent in its sparseness;
sharp instrumental outbursts push with great effort
against a backdrop of blackness as dense and heavy
as the sun. From the Abolition Port suggests a private
ritual, or a seancec or perhaps absurd theater, with
unseen players circumnavigating a pitch-dark industrial
space, sending out desperate distress signals and
futilely listening for a response.
Alto sax player Masayoshi Urabe is known for his solo
performances, but has worked alongside fellow psych/noise
travellers Kosoukuya, Junko, Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro,
CCCC), Kan Mikami, and Chie Mukai. Kiyoharu Kuwayama
played cello in the duo Kuwayama-Kijima, but his primary
project is the Catastrophe Point series, which he
records under the name Lethe.
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(note:
this album was recorded on October 2, 2003, not October
3, 2002 as is printed in the insert) |
Reviews
gKuwayama
& Urabe only recorded a single piece of 49 minutes
for this disc, but what room! Space is so vast, cold,
industrial, and disturbing, but all this is balanced by
the warmth, emotional intensity and therefore the humanity
of the musicians who do not shrink from some form of lyricism.
In the place chosen by Kuwayama, every sound flies, affects
suddenly and violently to finally follow his path and
free air. The echo is breathtaking and provides all the
body space that empowers the sound. I rarely heard a place
have as much presence and consistency, all sounds are
made spectral and ghostly as they immerse themselves in
this spacec a work rather tinged with a poignant lyricism
and sensitivity, wrenching, full of emotions rich and
intense, exacerbated by the acoustics. (From the Abolition
Port is) certainly one of the most captivating records
and most sensitive that Ifve heard recently, one of the
most singular and remarkable. I can not state enough that
this is a true masterpiece of emotions and sonorities,
a magical beauty and uncommon. A big thank you to these
two artists for this musical pearl!h
Improv Sphere
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This
disc is one of two recordings by Kuwayama Kiyoharu, (also
known as Lethe), on cello, viola, metal junk, wood sticks
etc., and Urabe Masayoshi on alto sax, chains, metal joints
and bell, improvising inside an abandoned warehouse in
Nagoya Japan. In one 50 minute-long wedge of sound these
two veterans use the space itself as much as their respective
instruments and sound makers, setting up hovering overtones
with sparse statements and tangled eruptions, often separated
by longish sections of quiet. Outside sounds like traffic
can also be heard at times. This is a beautiful recording
in which the large room becomes a third instrument, adding
its resonance to the efforts of its human occupants.
The release starts quietly with some rustling or dragging
sounds, and Urabe begins with wavering tones and high-pitched
squeals. The long reverberation time gives the effect
of slowing everything down, anything played in haste gets
mashed together and distorted by it's own echo, and maybe
that's why they're taking their time, leaving lots of
space. About six minutes in there's a nice passage of
droning cello with saxophone squeals and squeaks, which
gives way to slightly more frenetic interaction before
dying in an echoing haze. The whole is akin to watching
a film that's slowly moving in and out of focus. You can
catch details only fleetingly and then everything morphs
into colored blobs. Here though, the blobs are every bit
as interesting as the detail. At times it sounds as though
one or both players have moved farther away from the recording
microphones, and this obscures their attacks, making them
sound ghostly-long ago and far away; a memory of music.
The dragging and banging metal sounds conjure ideas of
machinery, clanking chains and grinding gears, reminding
us briefly of the buildings original purpose. There doesn't
seem to be any narrative structure arrived at, more a
rising and falling of motivic ideas set in a frame of
industrial chill, sometimes resembling non-idiomatic free
improvisation and other times veering close to classical
sounds, a recital lost in the recesses of mind.
review by jeph jerman
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gYoufre
unlikely to hear any room-style recording that captures
the room itself in such detail. So much so, in fact, that
itfs as if the space is an equal partner in the improvisation.
Recorded in a port warehouse, it actually sounds like
Urabe and Kuwayama are in different rooms, a fact reflected
in their playing. Therefs not dialogue here so much as
co-existence, each player in their own world yet unified
by the common space. The effect is fragile yet momentous,
every gesture magnified, truly free and unconnected to
the last. I doubt therefs any electronic manipulation,
but the space is enough: reverb, distortion and dynamic
shifts come seemingly at random, and the various bits
of metal, junk and percussion both players use expand
the sound as they reveal the space.h | Paris Transatlantic
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Kuwayama
- Urabe / From the Abolition Port
Going further into the depths of modern Japanese music,
this one is absolutely highly recommended. Urabe Masayoshi
plays alto, but also uses chains, metal joints and bells
for additional effect, and Kuwayama Kiyoharu on cello,
viola, metal junk and wood sticks.
The album consists of one fifty-minute long free improvisation
and sound exploration, and the result is an absolutely
staggering illustration of how it is possible to create
a musical universe with very sparse means, yet one that
is full of tension, meaning, and feeling. The tension,
the meaning and the feeling are not necessarily those
you like to have, but like all good stories, that's what
creates the suspense and keeps you seated to your chair
in anxious expectation of what is coming next, hoping
for relief, hoping for salvation, hoping ...
This universe resonates within the confines of a huge
empty port warehouse in Nagoya, Japan, and the "space
acts as a third instrument" we learn from the liner
notes, and that's well put.
The music itself is as far from spiritual music as possible
: it is harsh, cold, industrial, hair-raising at moments,
with whip-lashes of sound in between, sudden violent screams,
sad howling, ... with the musicians like lone adventurers
in a dark and empty space, losing track of each other,
lamenting their fate, suddenly totally alone and screaming
out for solace and comfort and the presence of something
warm, which is mostly denied, even if Masayoshi suddenly
plays some beautiful sensitive phrases around the middle
of the piece. You sometimes even doubt whether the two
musicians are on the same journey, or whether they are
the two last survivors of something terrible, doomed to
eternal conflict and battle between the two to them.
The true mastery of both artists resides not only in the
coherence of their vision, or their incredible expressivity,
but also in the controlled pace that creates one of the
most dramatic musical performances I've heard in a long
time.
If you are not easily scared, then you should really look
for this album (here), even if only 100 copies were made.
It will crush you. It is devastatingly beautiful.
Judge for yourselves.
The Freejazz Collective |
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