01 — Untitled
02 — In A Kitchen
03 — Untitled
04 — This could have been…
05 — Broken Toy
06 — Screw
07 — Janome
08 — Stanley
09 — Rumeur(s) Sazameki
Various Artists : From:/to:
P:REC 020 / CD / 2003Coproduced with A Bruit Secret (FR), Fragment (FR), Vert Pituite (FR), Hibari Music (JP)
01 — Jean-Philippe Gross, Utah Kawasaki : Untitled (08:04)
02 — Olivier Brisson, Yoichiro Shin : In A Kitchen (08:05)
03 — Hugo Roussel, Masafumi Ezaki : Untitled (07:59)
04 — Quentin Dubost, Yasuo Totsuka : This Could Have Been Easily Avoided (06:22)
05 — Masahiko Okura, Sharif Sehnaoui : Broken Toy (02:46)
06 — Masahiko Okura, Sharif Sehnaoui : Screw (05:14)
07 — Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ami Yoshida : Janome (06:46)
08 — Taku Unami, Norman D. Mayer : Stanley (08:05)
09 — Kazushige Kinoshita, Fabrice Eglin : Rumeur(s) Sazameki (09:44)
PRESS
Octobre 2003 / Dan Warburton
From:/to: is co-produced by no fewer than five small labels – A Bruit Secret, Fragment, Pricilia, Vert Pituite and Hibari (three of which are based in Metz, in Eastern France) – and takes the form of eight Europe-meets-Japan duo encounters. Jean Philippe Gross’ electric conductors fizz and crackle amiably along with Utah Kawasaki’s synthesizer, Olivier Brisson’s amplified percussion is paired with Yoichiro Shin’s cymbal and laptop, Hugo Roussel’s self-input mixing board meets Masafumi Ezaki’s trumpet, guitarists Quentin Dubost, Sharif Shenaoui, Norman Mayer and Fabrice Eglin team up with, respectively, Yasao Totsuka (mixing board), Okura (bass clarinet and tube), Unami (banjo) and Kinoshita (violin), and vocalist Ami Yoshida takes on Alfredo Costa Monteiro’s accordion. There’s a much wider range of music on offer here, and it’s a more globally satisfying collection of diverse approaches to collaboration. The Europeans seem more prepared to throw spanners into the works, be they in the form of splashes of colour (Brisson), vicious shards of noise (Roussel) or weird subterranean gurgles (Shenaoui). Yoshida provides further evidence of her extraordinary abilities, producing something that sounds like a small bird with a contact mic stuffed down its throat being slowly crushed to death in a paper bag. It’s pretty unsettling stuff, after which the Sugimoto-like plings of Unami’s banjo sound positively baroque. Definitely recommended for anyone curious about the latest state of play in French improvised music, from:/to: could end up becoming something of a landmark release.
VITAL WEEKLY N° 402
Week 51
Now here is an interesting work : eight French improvisers meet eight Japanese improvisers, but the meeting is entirely made via the postal system. This release is the fruit of no less then five labels ! A lot of the sixteen players here are new to me : I only recognized the names Utah Kawasaki and Ami Yoshida. But most of these people play on laptops, electronics of “self-input mixing boards”, so there is a guaranteed number of experimental works to be found here. From the cracklings of the opening duet between Utah Kawasaki and Jean-Philippe Gross to the closing piece by Kazushige Kinoshita and Fabrice Eglin, there is a lot of microsounding experiments to be noted. The silent approach set forth by the Japanese players (these here, but also others) is taken over by the French ones: silence and hardly audible sounds play a role in many of these pieces. The trumpet of Masafumi Ezaki is hard to recognize in his piece with Hugo Roussel, which sinks away in the extensive use of cracks. Each of the eight pieces is well done, with the pieces by Kawasaki/Gross and Ami Yoshida and Alfredo Costa Monteiro as the outstanding ones.