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.
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