http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/oren-ambarchi
A good friend of mine was living in Japan last year, and he told me about seeing you perform with O’Rourke and Haino for the release of Imikuzushi. He was under the impression that the show had been recorded for future release. Three albums in, is this yearly performing-and-recording thing a regular occurrence for you three now? And does my friend’s hopeful impression have any truth in it?
It does — in fact, I’ve mixed it already. Both Haino and Jim are really happy, they think it’s the best one thus far. It’s probably going to be a single LP, not a double, and it does have the rock thing like the last two, but there’s also some stuff on there that’s quite different. There’s a piece where Haino plays flute, it’s almost like a free-jazz vibe. There’s also a piece with Charlemagne Palestine and us playing; Charlemagne is playing wine glasses, and Eiko [Ishibashi], this great Japanese piano player and singer/songwriter, she’s also playing wine glasses. So we’re all sort of playing wine glasses and Haino is doing vocals, so there’s some more textural, not really ‘rock’ stuff on there, but then there’s rock stuff too.
It’s just funny the way it’s turned out that I happen to be in Japan around the same time every year, and we happen to do a gig and it’s fun, it gets recorded. I don’t have any immediate plans for Japan next year so who knows how long that’ll keep going, but there will be another trio record next year at some point.
Imikuzushi was my favourite album of last year, Haino at his absolute best so I am unreasonably excited right now.