It would be difficult to complain about not getting to see enough Japanese musicians and sound manipulators in New York City, but complaining in the face of difficulty is one of the things that makes our town great.
So, with all the exciting improvisation and experimentation going on in Japan, we don't get to see nearly enough of it here. And when they do make it to town, more often than not it's to play with some of the great musicians who live here rather than bringing their own bands. Understandably so, too, especially considering the expenses of travel, but it can make for a watered-down hybrid, an avant east-meets-west which despite the feeling of newness can disappoint when compared to the recordings that manage to seep overseas.
Haco has been recording for two decades (her first record, with her group After Dinner, came out in 1982), but she only made her New York City debut in May, 2002, when she played Downtown Music Gallery with Nick Didkovsky and then in a quartet with Ron Anderson, Elliot Sharp and Ken Yamazaki. Two great sets, and more an amalgam than a mere interpolation.
But this trio created something more organic, or at least closer to her own work, than was heard during her last visit - sparse, electronic pieces with vocals hovering overhead. It might be an assumption to say that the shared sensibility of this trio comes from the fact that her bandmates are both Japanese transplants living in New York, but it may not be a huge assumption. Mori's laptop, Onda's manipulated cassettes and Haco's simple electronics created sparse fields over which her vocals effortlessly floated.
The sound of the trio, who just recorded a cd for Tzadik, is closest to Haco's group Hoahio (who have two discs out, including the excellent Ohayo! Hoahio!, also on Tzadik), but the new songs are more atmospheric, less cute pop than Hoahio. Someone with a good pop ear, as Haco has, is saddled with having particular things an audience wants to hear ("No 'Happy Mail'? What happened to 'Less Than Lovers, More Than Friends'?!?"). The new material was less catchy, but perhaps more rewarding because of it.
Haco's pop sensibility includes a remarkable use of melody lines. Like Bjork and Tricky (especially with Martina Topley-Bird), her vocals fly solitarily above the rest of the song, electronics burbling below with nothing reinforcing the melody line. It's a remarkable device, and allows lush music to carry a cold sparseness or a melancholy longing.
One repeated device from her last visit was a small ceramic jar, seemingly with a condenser microphone and small speaker inside. It's a 16 ounce sound chamber. Removing the lid creates quiet white noise and feedback, which she alters with subtle movements of the lid held slightly above the jar. Slowly, deliberately, she dropped a few pebbles into the jar, the impact within amplified to create soft, reverb percussion sounds. Then she closed it again, as if to show that she lives in a very small world -- small sounds, small songs, where anything you touch can be made music.
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