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  Otomo Yoshihide & Paal Nilssen-Love 

  (JVTLANDT) 


  
   review by Kurt Gottschalk
  2015-04-10
Otomo Yoshihide & Paal Nilssen-Love:  (JVTLANDT)

The electric guitar is the most conventional instrument composer, conceptualist and bandleader Otomo Yoshihide plays. Like his playing of the turntable, his approach to the guitar is visceral, sometimes brutal, and like the turntable (which he plays as a noise-generating device, without using records) he is physically responsible for generating the sounds � something rather different than his laptop music. His attack is similar on the guitar and the turntable � explosive barrages in search of feedback to let ring � but it's on the guitar, a lexicon so familiar over the last 75 years, that we can most here his inventive mind in the heat of the moment.

Stronger in expression than finesse, Yoshihide shares with such (very different) guitarists as Derek Bailey, Marc Ribot and James Blood Ulmer an interest in the noises the instrument is capable of making as well as phases recalled from more popular styles. His playing on his cover of the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" (recorded with both his New Jazz Quintet and New Jazz Orchestra) underscores this treatment of abrasive noise as a relevant part of music making (as opposed to being somehow "anti-music").

The self-titled half-hour duet with drummer Paal Nilssen-Love (perfunctorily titled after both their names with the single track titled after the date of the recording) is a rather rare chance to hear Yoshihide in a more spontaneous setting. He has released solo guitar records in addition to his ensemble work but interacting in a duo setting with a drummer as powerful and demonstrative as Paal Nilssen-Love affords Yoshihide the chance to move freely while being pushed. They've recorded together before � in trio with Norwegian noise master Lasse Marhaug and with Yoshihide sitting in with Nilssen-Love's power trio The Thing � but here they are heard in fast-paced dialogue. What stands out most is how responsive each of them is, what quick thinkers they are. They move in waves, occasionally hitting on jammy tropes (there are moments of Hendrix and Bonham phrasing too quick to be considered quotes) but mostly just nimbly ambling and pounding about, occasionally torquing the electrified excitement into the red. It's hardly the best album by either of them, nor their best album together, but it's certainly an invigorating listen.





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