It is obvious that Michiyo Yagi is the wild card on this album. While drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and noise guru Lasse Marhaug are among the fearless innovators of the Norwegian experimental music scene and McPhee has been part of the transcontinental free jazz collaboration that started about twenty years ago, the connection with Yagi came somewhat later. Since the start of the millennium, this virtuoso koto player has gradually become widely known as a radical freethinker, equally at ease in freely improvised music as in contemporary classical and the traditional music of her home country, Japan.
The connection with Nilssen-Love started more than a decade ago. Since then, the two have regularly met, bonding with a.o. Peter Brötzmann. By the winter of 2011, the trio of Yagi, Marhaug and Nilssen-Love had already recorded at Tokyo’s GOK Studio, but the recording of this quartet two years later, became something different again. Of course it is obvious that any record involving the rightfully legendary McPhee will have something exceptional to offer.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the recording is that it did not become a muscular free-for-all session. ‘Soul Stream’ is certainly not without its moments of broiling intensity and white hot interplay. But the overall impression is subtler, as the rage and thunder these people are capable of are replaced with a more nuanced, flowing and no less exceptional interplay. Yagi’s command of the electric 21-string koto and the 17-string bass koto meshes seamlessly with Marhaug’s knack for sound coloring and the diverse techniques of McPhee – lyrical and incisive, as usual – and Nilssen-Love, who is once again playing with his trademark abandon. At once searching, genre-bending and ritualistic, ‘Soul Stream’ entirely lives up to its title.
-- Guy Peters
credits
released September 14, 2016
MICHIYO YAGI
electric 21-string koto, 17-string bass koto
JOE MCPHEE
pocket trumpet, tenor and alto saxophones
LASSE MARHAUG
electronics and objects
PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE
drums and percussion
All music by YAGI (Hotwire Inc), MCPHEE (JOMAC Publishing, ASCAP), MARHAUG (Tono), and NILSSEN-LOVE (Tono)
Recorded by YOSHIAKI KONDO
at GOK SOUND, Tokyo on January 21 2013
Mixed and produced by LASSE MARHAUG
Co-produced by MARK E. RAPPAPORT
Artwork by MANOR GRUNEWALD
Graphic design by LASSE MARHAUG & LEVI SEELDRAEYERS
Screen printing by LEVI SEELDRAEYERS
Special Thanks to SACHI HAYASAKA, RYOSUKE “RIO” NAGATA,
MIZUHO YABE, ZODIAC WORKS, NORWEGIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, NORWEGIAN JAZZ FEDERATION, and FUND FOR PERFORMING ARTS
I love these guys! I am so happy that they also like to perform in Moscow and we have the opportunity to hear them live))
This is a many-sided album, not only free-jazz, not only jazzcore, but also modern jazz, free improvisation and experimental music. So expressive, energetic, and musical album!
It is important to add that this Web-release contains 4 bonus tracks (solo improvisations of all musicians & 'Round About Lapa') that makes the album to be more than just the best album of the year )) Olga Kivius
Outstanding trio...outstanding recording...outstanding release...total trust...total understanding...total commitment...this all equals an unparalleled listening experience. John Cratchley
Canadian producer and multi-instrumentalist galvanizes bowed guitars, cellos, and synths into an off-kilter exploration of heat and desire. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 25, 2024
Disappear into the shadowy dark ambient on the latest from Carlos Ferreira, each track texturally rich & absorbing. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 11, 2023
Great, great band, The Engines...this live recording (The Green Mill, Chicago) just hits the sweet spot continuously...
The playing, the improvising, the interplay, the energy and the verve just don't get better than this for me...all Ken Vandermark associates, all quality guaranteed composers.
Lots of exceptional stuff on this label (Dave Rempis' Aerophonic Records) too...check it all out, it's worth your time and effort. John Cratchley