Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Zen Kaiju-Kiku Day/Henry Kaiser
Balance Point Acoustics (2007)

Track listing: Gojira Examines a Monk in Meditation; Anguiras Pacifies the Mind; Fairy Mothra's Preaching Sign, Gyaos Washes the Bowl, Dagora Calls His Own Master; Varan's Wheel, Gamera's Dog, This Mind is Not Pigmon, Ultraman Investigates, Jiger Twirls a Flower; A Philosopher Asks King Ghidorah; Tripping Over the Oxygen Destroyer.

Personnel: Kiku Day: ji-nashi shakuhachi; Henry Kaiser: electric and acoustic guitars.

Anyone who frequents this forum knows that Kiku Day is a player who does both traditional and modern music exclusively on the demanding and musically inexact jinashi (un-pasted bore) shakuhachi. Disclaimer: she's also a friend of mine but I can be objective about the music.

Henry Kaiser is a veteran improvising guitarist with a long history of cross-cultural and multi-ethnic collaborations under his belt. If you are not familiar with Kaiser, reference points would be Derek Bailey and Eugene Chadbourne.

This album is a selection of free improvisations between jinashi and electric/acoustic guitar. The guitar is frequently distorted and warped electronically and by using unorthodox playing techniques. Many or most of these techniques have been developed relatively recently in the history of guitar by the likes of the aforementioned Bailey and Chadbourne, Hendrix, Sonny Sharrock, John Fahey and a host of others. The equivalent trashing of the shakuhachi sound comes from a totally human source, Kiku and many of the noisy and abrasive sounds originate in traditional shakuhachi techniques such as muraiki.

The success or failure of any improvisation outing, live or studio, depends upon the resourcefulness and communication of the participants. Free improvisation comes with it's own set of parameters. Sure, you don't have to learn the head or the changes, because there are none, but where do you go from here? Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy came out of the jazz tradition, improvised in that vein and then leapt into totally free improv along with the rest of his generation in the 60's. After a while he gave up on total free improv because he called it a "fishing expedition".

I guess almost all free improvisation has the element of "fishing expedition" about it and this CD is no exception. The song titles refer to monsters in 60's Japanese sci-fi flicks and a lot of the music has the spirit of a monster awakening and prowling for victims, slashing its tail around randomly and knocking things over and a variety of different spewing effects. But like the vintage sci fi it's based on, you have to sit around and listen to some inane chatter in between the fight and destruction scenes.

Taken individually most of the selections shine as examples of the genre. "Gojira Examines a Monk in Meditation" comes out of the chute with a swagger not usually associated with any kind of flute music. The jinashi multi-phonics and bending Kiku produces sit well in the ultra-modern context of nervous and splintering guitar aggro. Overall the soundscape is pleasing. Each track has its merits and demonstrate varying levels of the duo working together and against each other. In some cases however it sounds like they are reaching around in their bags of tricks looking for something new to play and maybe not listening to each other as much as they should.

Such are the pitfalls of working without a net in the realm of free improvisation. I would also venture that the length of the CD format works against projects like this because after a while you think, "that was good, but I want to hear something different". It's very difficult to sustain interest, tension and release, over the course of 70 minutes.

That said, these are still some of the best shakuhachi based improvisations out there. I recommend it to people who are interested in free music and/or shakuhachi and/or jinashi. But I'd also suggest listening to it in short batches in order not to fatigue. Dump it in your iPod and put individual songs in playlists.