This release reaches a nadir of sorts. It is a collaboration between two of electroacoustic improv's most outsider talents, both well-known for their uncanny ability to wrench what is necessary from the barest of "instruments" (Yoshida's voice, Nakamura's no-input mixing board). Yet the paucity of the sounds on display, the veritable minutiae that is their very presence, almost transcends criticism, observation, or description. What exactly does "music" like this accomplish? What is its innate purpose/function/meaning?

Across the span of the nearly 48 minutes of this piece, Yoshida and Nakamura provide little in the way of answers, reveal little of an agenda, provide little in the way of context. Certainly what is revealed here is hardly "music", no matter how broadly that word begs definition. Through the long morass of aberrant squeaks, whistles, detuned noise(s), hisses, and digital prickles it is unclear where in fact to situate this work. These are, simply put, disconnected, unmoored, fleeting glimpses of sound and noise, as it were, though so little in the way of dynamism ever occurs. It is as if we've caught an ill-advised glimpse into a secretive domain of digital anarchy, though if this is indeed the sound of a revolution, it's doubtful much if any offensive resistance would be mounted. As the high-pitched sine waves crest, subside and literally fold into themselves, it seems Yoshida and Nakamura want to augur a photo-negative of soundscaping, a perverse reverse that challenges the nature of our hearing, of how a listener should perceive the sounds at hand, how in fact it is possible to process the artist's process. On face, this is a seemingly easy exercise, but Yoshida and Nakamura don't make it easy on us. These are not pleasurable sounds/noises to listen to: were they as objectionable to create? Is there an assaultive, Merzbow-like sensibility at work here, where the goal is to bludgeon with brute force or tacit un-listenability? Experienced at low volumes, I doubt that was the artist's intentions — played at anything but a low volume, it's equally doubtful these scurrilous, microbial intrusions would leave any residual effect other than abject revulsion.

The title Soba is Bara is also maddeningly unclear (the enclosed liner notes are in Japanese), so any clues offering themselves up remain utterly and irrevocably bound to the sounds/noises the duo conjure. A mystery wrapped in an enigma bundled in a riddle? The length of this sonic endurance test hardly justifies the trouble of decoding, unless one wishes to unearth whatever cryptic meanings do or don't unfold. I'd wager that for most of us, forgetting the depth of our artistic appreciation or inscrutability, this could well be where digital improv hits a definable dead end, where context becomes moot and form not only trumps function but whips it to its bitter end.

Ami Yoshida / Toshimaru Nakamura: Soba to Bara Is On Sale at Squidco!