It would be far too easy, though admittedly tempting, to pigeonhole Japanese improv as the high-powered freneticism that can often be associated with it. The earlier work I've heard from saxophonist Akira Sakata would support the stereotype. Here though, another side of the multifaceted musician is manifest, a wonderfully meditative and reflective space is created in which the duo's polyphonic art ebbs and flows like chamber music.
Some of the back-and-forth is conventional enough, and it's important to stress that I'm using the word conventional in this context of sound sinews, timbral dialogues and other externalities concerning which "extended technique" and all of its concerns are givens. The more traditional notions of dialogue pervade from 5:17 into the second of these two lengthy pieces. The duo bandies motives about, melodic phrases kitty-cornering and jumping registers with Sakata on clarinet. Ikeda's synthesizer tones are exquisitely shaped, like those informing Tom Hamilton's early 1980s work. As the piece moves along, a more parallel mode of expression foregrounds itself, bubbling and nearly boiling until silences begin to dominate.
Occasionally, Sakata will switch to percussion, to lovely effect. The bells at 16:44 of the second piece conjure shades of George Crumb, as do similar percussion incantations in the first piece. They sustain in an introspective way, bringing to mind Keith Rowe's assertion that a drone is really silence made audible. This music is so much about that sort of semi-static gesture. One of the standout moments of the disc comprises a saxophone crescendo, its arc at 2:39 of the second piece. In the context of so many soft sounds, its peak comes across as granite, rising and then dissolving in a liquid descent mirrored by Ikeda's electronics.
If Webern had lived long enough to enter the then-emergent world of electronics, he may have produced music that sounded like this. Far too often, introspective music can be either so bland as to be forgettable or so near to silence as to test the patience of even the most devoted listener. Instead, Sakata and Ikeda have produced a beautifully recorded and played concert document, each sound a tiny galaxy conjoining with its neighbors in a moment-to-moment exploration of quietly mesmerizing discovery.
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