Bishop Records, EXJP011
TANIKAWA Takuo (gtr), KAWASAKI Jun (wb #1~3), KANDA Shin-Ichiro (pf #4), KOYAMA Shota (dr #3), Tim Barnes (perc), ENDO Kazumoto (think pad)
The first leader album of TANIKAWA Takuo who is a guitarist of EXIAS-J. He studied classical guitar in Germany and its experience appears as the precision architecture and virtuosic technique on music. The sounds are technological and primitive by using a gut and an electric guitar with PC and also prepared. This album is multicolored by several costars like KOYAMA Shota of a world famous drummer of YAMASHITA Yosuke Trio, Tim Barnes of avant-garde percussionist in New York, ENDO Kazumoto of electronica and KAWASAKI Jun of a contrabass player who is the last disciple of YOSHIZAWA Motoharu and SAITO Tetsu.
Bishop Records, EXJP010
KINNO Yoshiaki (sax), IRUMAGAWA Masami (cello #2), KANDA Shin-Ichiro (pf #1&6), KAWASAKI Jun (wb #1 & 6), SHIMIZU Hiroshi (gtr #4), ICHIMURA Satoru (gtr #4), KONDO Hideaki (gtr #1), TANIKAWA Takuo (gtr #1), TANIKAWA Teruaki (sax #1), NISHIZAWA Naoto (dr #1)
KINNO Yoshiaki is a famous saxophonist in Japan and well-knowned to play with many talented players like John Zorn, Evan Parker, Fred Frith, Peter Brotzmann, HAINO Keiji and etc. His music career is enough long and fulfilling. This album is released after the time is ripe and his first leader album made with several improvisers included IRUMAGAWA Masami of M's NEXUS and members of EXIAS-J. His play is filled with intelligence in free jazz.
Bishop Records, EXJP009
KAWASAKI Jun (contrabass), KUNIHIRO Kazuki (poetry reading #12), KANDA
Shin-Ichiro (pf #1), KONDO Hideaki (e-gtr #13), NAKAMIZO Toshiya (oboe #4 & 7)
The first leader's album of young genius basisit who is the mosttalented pupil of Tetsu Saito. He is also music director and composer of japanese traditional dancerNishikawa Senrei. His sound express lament, anxiety and furious with his unbelievabletechnic crossing over between composing and improvisation.
Very sensitive and like seeking after truth.
Bishop Records, EXJP008
KANDA Shin-Ichiro (Piano), NORIKANE Sakura (Percussions)
A duo album by KANDA Shin-Ichiro on piano and NORIKANE Sakura on original percussions.
These two players, who make classical music a root, progress a peculiar aesthetic in improvised music. They stand at the point of middle between composing and improvising and come and go freely. It sounds like fragile aesthetics as if stepping on a thin ice of the time by a modern romantic phrasing and sensitive percussions.
Bishop Records, EXJP007
Caprice (Russian project), EXIAS-J (Japanese project) etc.
This is a music collection of a russian film "Angels in Twilight"drawing interstice of dream and reality by a japanese director "NISHI Shusei".
To interesting, it is configured by original sound tracks in the film by Caprice which is a russian groupe and also tracks composed after watching film by EXIAS-J which is a japanese groupe of improvisers. It flows russian traditional taste and japanese feeling there with centering on the film.
Bishop Records, EXJP006
KONDO Hideaki (Gtr), NAKAMIZO Tosiya (Pf), NISHIZAWA Naoto (Dr,Perc), TANIKAWA Teruaki (Sax), IKEGAMI Hideo (Bass, Berimbau)
They are improvisers primitively and easy for them to make so-called "free music". But in this album, they dare to force it on oneself to play under several rules or restriction to keep the tension and enhance new performance skill. It makes success to avoid the cliche of free music as a result.
The performance with a superior micro distance sense and careful control is filled with cold geometrical beauty.
Bishop Records, EXJP005
TANIKAWA Teruaki (Asax,Sopranino),NISHIZAWA Naoto (Dr,Perc)
Not intervals or phrasing. The focus of the performance is narrowed to one point of which the breath struggles as vibration/resonance of musical instruments here. It forms lines by these many dangerous balances over this point, and draws the compressed scenery by changes of the breath. It seems that he resonants his soul with the vibration of sax and works to untie his soul into the space together with sounds.
Bishop Records, EXJP004
KONDO Hideaki (Guitar), NISHIZAWA Naoto (Dr,Perc)
New Jap improv duo of two complete unknowns - Naoto Nishizawa (percussion) and Hideaki Kondo (electric guitar) - both completely unaffiliated to PSF, Alchemy, Org, or Creativeman Disc, and neither of whom have ever played with Keiji Haino, Asahito Nanjo, Kawabata Makoto, Taku Sugimoto or Otomo fucking Yoshihide. Which seems to serve to mean that they've directed their gaze away from home for inspiration. Although the booklet wears a weighty endorsement from Eddie Prevost praising their lack of idiommaticity, to my rather humble ears this is a very western-sounding Japanese improv record. 'Bishop' sits needling tracers of feedback guitar lines atop free jazz drumming in Ascension-esque fashion for 20-odd screechingly intense minutes, and the remaining two tracks see Kondo employing a slowed down/more melodic/less harsh remedial Baileyist style for 'Schrodinger's Cat''s busy bantering, and a quieter, more spacious 'Constancy Phenomenon'. The playing is, it must be said, technically excellent and very impressive (percussion especially) if a little derivative. Nonetheless, both participants display more than enough ability and promise to imply that they could likely come up with something a lot more ear-pricking that this before too long... -Nick Cain (opprobrium)
EXIAS-J
/ Critical Blank
Bishop Records, EXJP002
TANIKAWA Teruaki (Asax,Sopranino),IKEGAMI Hideo (WB), KONDO Hideaki (Guitar),
NISHIZAWA Naoto (Dr)
...and though, strictly speaking, this isn't it, it's excellent nonetheless.
Enlarged to a quartet with the addition of Teruaki Tanikawa (alto, sopranino)
and Hideo Ikegami (double bass), the group thoughtfully work their way
through six "sets" - one sax/drums duo, one bass/drums duo,
four quartets - of unhurried and contemplative improvisations, all taken
from one October '99 day's recordings. The pace and level of activity
is negotiated delicately but rationally, making for a languid, spacious
and un-dissonant dynamic, with all members at various points sitting out
for up to minutes at a time. The sets are not presented in the order they
were recorded, but melt seamlessly into one another regardless. In a group
as carefully poised as this one the sax is the inevitable point of focus,
and it's perhaps overly dominant - Tanikawa is from time to time guilty
of playing over the top of his collaborators, and indulging in inappropriate
levels of volume and activity. When he checks himself, however, stretching
and modulating his notes, eking out of them maximum melodic potential,
and allowing them to soak the air, the quartet fall in around him to produce
clean, understated and astutely judged improvisations which sound very
fresh indeed. -Nick Cain (opprobrium)