http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/ar...=1&oref=slogin
Music Review
New Voices From Japan: Improvised Sounds at the Japan Society
By
JON PARELES
Published: May 15, 2006
Singers brought gadgets with them for New Voices From Japan, a program of improvisations organized by John Zorn at the Japan Society. On Friday, the first of two nights, they didn't just wail, gibber, shriek, cackle and croon; they also had electronics to play with and against.
Mr. Zorn has connected downtown New York improvisation to other scenes worldwide, particularly in Japan. For the first concert of his Tzadik Label Music Series, he brought three improvising vocalists from Japan: Yamataka Eye of the Boredoms; Haino Keiji, also known as a noise-slinging guitarist; and Makigami Koichi, who uses the techniques of throat-singing to float pure, eerie overtones above a guttural growl.
They were joined in various combinations by Ikue Mori (a New Yorker since 1977) on laptop, Mike Patton (from Faith No More) on vocals and electronics, Jim O'Rourke (a producer and sometime member of Sonic Youth, the Red Krayola and Loose Fur) on electronics and Mr. Zorn on alto saxophone.
None of the musicians was a novice. They have been working with improvisation for decades, so they are largely past the most obvious gestures, like call-and-response or easy comic effects. They still use plenty of funny noises, from scrapes to barks. But what they're after is a mesh and a direction: music that unites utterly disparate sounds and evolves in some intuitively shared way. The musicians also have to find the right moment to stop, and they did, making some collaborations as short as a pop song.
The music, as usual at improvised concerts, was all over the place. There was hovering flying-saucer music from a stage full of musicians twiddling their electronics. There was a piece in which Mr. Haino set up a looping bass line amid Ms. Mori's synthesized gurgles and his own vocal and electronic outbursts.
Mr. O'Rourke used electronics to suspend Mr. Zorn's sputtering saxophone and Mr. Yamataka's high-speed jabbering amid otherworldly sustained tones. There was a raucous, screaming, electronically echoed duet by Mr. Patton and Mr. Yamataka, and another duet in which Mr. Haino wielded his guitar in lunging, slashing noise outbursts answered and goaded by Mr. Zorn's saxophone.
There was even deliberate harmony, in a gorgeous, delicate duet from Mr. Makigami, playing a Central Asian jaw harp and then singing what may have been an old folk melody — with preternaturally clear overtones — while Mr. O'Rourke followed him with sustained, organlike chords drawn from a box sprouting patch cords. In another piece Mr. Makigami followed his vocal lines with a theremin, while Ms. Mori surrounded him in twittering birdlike sounds.
Among these musicians there was little East-West contrast. They're all part of an international downtown where every noise holds possibilities.