When she puts on a show, she milks her songs for everything they have to offer — and makes her band work for every penny she’s paying them.
Sora no Koya, UA’s second live album, follows a period of exponential creative growth for the artist. In 2001, she rocked out with ex-Blankey Jet City guitarist Asai Kenichi on their side project AJICO. The following year, she crafted her most minimal and haunting album, Doroboo.
Sora no Koya is steeped in Doroboo’s aesthetic — even when UA performs her earlier songs, they’re imbued with that album’s sparse darkness.
And length.
Although consisting of only eight songs, Doroboo clocked in at 51 minutes, its songs stretching six to eight minutes. The average song on Sora no Koya is about seven minutes long — which means UA has taken a lot of liberties with her set list.
On “Sekai”, she gives violinist Katsui Yuuji and Little Creatures bassist Suzuki Masato free reign to add another three minutes to the song’s original six minute length.
“Aoi Tori wa Itsu mo Human-ge” receives a total transformation, turning from slow guitar ballad to an eerie landscape of long drones and quiet pulses.
For her supporting band, UA brought together an impressive line-up from some of Japan’s most experimental bands, including percussionist Asa-Chang, and Oono Yumiko from avant-rockers Buffalo Daughter.
The mostly acoustic band suits UA’s quiet, smokey delivery, but when they’re called on to improvise, they fire things up. Witness Suzuki’s and Oono’s energetic solos on “Toro”.
The band also put a distinctive stamp on UA’s repertoire. “Kazoetaranai Yoru no Ashi Oto”, originally suited for airplay in dance clubs, retains its beat-friendly pace but sounds all together new with its unplugged arrangement.
UA’s set list concentrates mainly on songs from Ametora onward. “Kumo ga Chigireru Toki” and “Joonetsu” are nowhere to be found. Still, that leaves three albums from which UA can draw, tying together a myriad of styles into a seamless, two-hour performance.
At times, Sora no Koya feels exhausting, but as a document of a performer’s creative peak, this album would be hard to top.
Supercar continues its collaboration with electronica producer Yoshinori Sunahara on a new single to be released on Jan. 28, 2004. Titled “Last Scene”, the release is coupled with two more songs, “Antenna” and “Scale”. The new song is a mellow number featuring a piano. Yoshinori worked with Supercar on its most recent single, “BGM”, released in November 2003.
The Mad Capsule Markets will release a new single in February 2004, the band’s official web site announced. The title of the single was not yet revealed, but a limited edition pressing will bundle a new action figure in the style of Pochi Car by Medicom Toys, who will also handle the toy’s production.
It’s been 2 1/2 years since the Mad Capsule Markets released any new material in Japan. Since the mid-90s, the band has toured overseas, cutting back on its activities in Japan.
Sound quality may go sour. Technical problems can go awry. Performances may miss the mark.
But the problem with live albums also highlight the problem of studio albums. Recording studios can process out every imperfection, resulting in works that give an impression not borne out on stage.
In the studio, Bonnie Pink possesses a sweet flower of a voice, at times fragile, at times emotive. It’s not a voice suited to the theatre-size capacity of Akasaka Blitz, as evidenced on the singer-songwriter’s first live album, Pink in Red.
Right from the start, Pink sings like she’s trying to hear herself over her band, her voice straining to project. And her tender falsetto? Positively drowned out. In fact, it’s downright painful to hear her flub a note at the beginning of “Over the Brown Bridge”.
Pink works best when the band backs off. “Rope Dancer”, on which she’s accompanied by nothing but piano, allows her voice to inhabit the song more comfortably. “Need You” scales back the busyness of the opening “Your Butterfly”, and Pink sounds like she own the song.
Does that mean Pink should be exiled to little more than intimate club gigs? Not necessarily.
It does mean, however, that in translating her songs to stage, she could perhaps stray from the studio arrangement a lot more, especially if it means highlighting her voice.
Another flaw of Pink in Red is its concentration on one performance at one venue. It’s not uncommon for a live album to be collect different performances from various venues. Concentrating on one performance risks catching a performer on an off-night. (See Do As Infinity’s Do the Live.)
If Pink in Red demonstrates nothing else, it shows the studio album for which this live performance supported, Present, is one of her strongest ever.
Most of the CD portion of Pink in Red — it also includes a DVD — focuses on tracks from that album, and it’s tough to get “Rope Dancer”, “Present”, “April Shower” and “Need You” out of your head hours after the album has played.
The album ends with a new song, “Soldiers”, which only highlights further the fallibility of the live recording. Pink sounds gorgeous as usual on the track.
As my brother suggested when he listened to Pink in Red, maybe it’s time to give Bonnie Pink her own Unplugged special.
Zazen Boys/ex-Number Girl leader Mukai Shuutoku will participate in a live talk at Shunjuku Loft Plus One on Dec. 18. Mukai will be joined by “spur-of-the-moment tresspassing guests”. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the talk begins at 7 p.m. Tickets for the event will be handled by Lawson Tickets and go on sale for $15 on Dec. 1 (L-code: 31652).
Zoobombs are making its latest single, “Way In/Way Out”, available as a free download. Soul Flower Union guitarist Nakagawa Kyou performs on the 10-minute jam session. Zoobombs and Soul Flower Union recently completed a joint tour, picture from which are available on the Zoobombs’ web site.
the brilliant green bassist and leader Okuda Shunsaku and singer Kawase Tomoko registered their marriage on Nov. 22, according to the band’s official site. Kawase left a statement on the site, saying she always thought she’d be married when she turned 28. The site also announced the marriage of guitarist Ryo Matsui.
Of the three singles Kronos Quartet released to commemorate its 30th anniversary, Peteris Vasks’ String Quartet No. 4 offers little in terms of any compositional challenges and is admittedly derivative.
It’s also the most beautiful.
Vasks’ String Quartet No. 4 represents one of three kinds of works the Kronos performs — commissioned pieces. (The other two are repetoire pieces, such as Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, and pieces in other idioms, as with Harry Partch’s U.S. Highball).
Vasks says the quartet embodies his personal struggle to find hope in a world teetering on the edge of extinction. He namedrops Dmitri Shostakovich when describing the piece’s “Tocatta” movements (the second and fourth).
It’s more than just a passing resemblance — the “Tocatta” movements sound like drafts of Shostakovich’s second movement in the Quartet for Strings No. 8.
Is that a bad thing? In this case, no.
Vasks’ Quartet No. 4 has been described as “elegiac”. That’s modern classical doublespeak for saying it has melody and tonality, two ideas that are still somewhat anathema to Western art music of the last century.
But for a listening public conditioned to think of modern classical music in terms of movie soundtracks, Vasks’ Quartet No. 4 is an accessible work.
If it bears resemblance to Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8 or Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings — see “Chorale”, the third movement — so be it. Of course, both Shostakovich and Barber have been recorded previously by Kronos.
Vasks achieves what he sets out to do in this work. The strife and hope he struggles to balance get equal airtime. The “Tocatta” movements are downright fiery, the “Elegy” and “Meditation” introspective.
Kronos brings out every ounce of emotion inherent in the work, delivering a magnetic and charged performance. In this recording, the ensemble gets to the core of what marks its reputation.
Regardless of its collaborations with world-class singers, international performers or multimedia pioneers, Kronos is simply a string quartet.
And any new work that reminds listeners of this fact is welcome any day.
Spitz is set to release its 28th single, titled “Stargazer”, on Jan. 21, 2004. It’s the band’s newest release in a year and a half and serves as the theme song to the popular TV show “Ainori”. The single’s coupling track, “Mikatzuki Rock Sono 3”, was premiered during the band’s 2002 Sugoroku tour. In December, Spitz will also release a four-DVD boxed set of live performances from the past four years.
To commemorate its 30th anniversary, Kronos Quartet released three “singles” to represent the kinds of works the ensemble champions.
Kronos’ singles feature half-hour length works which the quartet says deserve to be heard on their own. Historically, they have been the weakest recordings in the group’s discography.
U.S. Highball by Harry Partch falls in a category of idiomatic works translated to the string quartet format — a category which includes, for instance, Colon Nancarrow’s pieces for player piano and Television’s “Marquee Moon”.
Partch’s works, however, present some staggering cross-platform challenges. Not only did Partch devise a microtonal pitch system — that is, a scale containing far, far more than 12 pitches between an octave — he built his own instruments to play it.
How successful would arranging a proprietary system of performance be to an open, standard format? For this review, it’s impossible to tell. In other words, I’ve never listened to the original piece.
And that’s not surprising.
Although a contemporary of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, Partch is no less influencial but only to a few. As the liner notes states, Partch’s subject matter for U.S. Highball, subtitled “A Musical Account of Slim’s Transcontinental Hobo Trip”, is underground compared to the populism of Copland’s Appalchain Spring or Bernstein’s On the Town.
While Partch was an innovator where forging his own pitch system is concerned, the legacy for perpetuating such an achievement has been less successful. It’s tough to play a custom-made instrument when there’s little documentation to explain how it works.
Enter Kronos. The most it can hope to do is perpetuate Partch’s music through its own means of expression — the string quartet.
And try it does. Regardless of what long-time naysayers of Kronos think of the quartet’s technique, it sure scores stellar in the gumption category, something not lost in the spirited performance of Partch pupil Ben Johnston’s arrangements.
Unfortunately, Partch’s musical language is too idiomatic to work in other forms. Despite Kronos’ best efforts, something just gets lost in translation.
Baritone David Barron throws in his requisite 100 percent into the performance, but his thoroughly trained technique is an uneven match to the text’s streetwise tone. By comparrison, Johnston’s performance on another Partch piece arranged for Kronos, Barstow, captures that essential grittiness.
If nothing else, U.S. Highball serves to further name recognition of Harry Partch. But even without listening to the original work, it’s evident Partch’s music exists in its own creative space. Kudos to Kronos, though, for taking the shot.