HUE (WITH RISA TAKEDA)

This is the first in a series of eight (so far!!!) live albums released this year, documenting the collaborative exploits of jazz pianist Risa Takeda and zeuhl/noise drummer/vocalist/all-around crazy dude Tatsuya Yoshida in concerts since 2020 (with this particular performance dating back to just before covid-19 spread across the world). Yoshida, in addition to pounding away on his drum kit and throwing his trademark weepings and whinings around, plays a Kaossilator, a keyboard-less synthesizer that can be controlled by one's finger on a touchpad. Despite the fact that this album was released by Yoshida's record label and puts his name in front, if anyone plays first fiddle in this performance, it is Takeda, who has a profound say in the mood of every song with her army of digital keyboards from which she seems determined to extract every possible sample to capture it on record (yes, there are Mellotron samples!). Takeda has made somewhat a name for herself in the recent past for putting out rather odd, off-the-beaten-path modern jazz albums (including a collaboration with Guru Guru's Mani Neumeier earlier this year), but this is as avant-garde as I've heard her: the music on this album (as on their seven other albums) is fully improvised (or at least almost; I suspect they did rehearse a few cues, since a few moments, most notably the ending to "PHT", seem a little too synchronized to be spontaneous) and shows little regard who might want to play it at parties: this is an absolutely incessant assault on the senses filled to the brim with frantic drum blasts, cluster chords, dissonant piano runs and dirty synthesized sound effects.

To call this free jazz wouldn't be wrong per se, but it wouldn't fully do it justice either. Pre-meditated or not, these songs do have some sort of structure and aren't just monolithic noise from start to finish. Not often does it feel like Takeda and Yoshida are playing in spite of each other's presence; rather they complement each other perfectly and manage to continuously develop new complicated rhythmic and melodic patterns on the spot. The opening "BOR" is almost unbelievable in this regard, constantly sliding back and forth from freely improvised chaos into a more constrained section, every time in a new rhythm and a new tempo, and with Takeda doing her best to add some jazzy clavinet and piano solos over the ever evolving beat below her.

Most songs on here either start as a disjointed sound collage before turning into a bonafide jazz fusion jam, or vice-versa. "FW" and "GZ" for example both start off as easy-going jazz shuffles with an ironic 'café jazz' atmosphere that gradually increase in intensity and atonal insanity before finally collapsing from exhaustion. In the breathtaking "SYE", a similar development is used to a truly cathartic effect, starting out as an almost ambient piece with piano and synthesized trumpet until the drums kick in, after which a battle seems to happen between the soulful and demonic sides of jazz, with neither side winning in the end but rather converging in a glorious synthesis

The most tonal songs on the album are "GYG", a Hiromi-esque 6/8 waltz in F minor, and "IBL" which uses simple modes all throughout before suddenly changing pace and going south at the very end. However, even these moments of relative peace are surrounded by the most noisy tracks on the album: "DST" with its high-pitched distorted organ that's dripping with delay effects, "LTC" with its screeching electronics that give way to a dissonant organ jam in 7/8 and "RU" which closes the album on a note as violent as that with which it began. This is brutal prog in one of its purest forms, a rollercoaster of sound that demands attention. You simply have to listen to this if you have an affinity for the extreme fringes of progressive music.