Caught live at Bar Isshee in Tokyo, Japan in 2017, the duo of Kazuo Imai (nylon string guitar) and Roger Turner (snare drum, tom tom, cymbals, metal & wood) present two distinct sets, each one on a separate CD, the first using open but continuous playing of great control and precision, the second a more unpredictable and assertive set of unorthodox interplay.
Format: 2 CDs Condition: New Released: 2018 Country: Japan Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded live at Bar Isshee, in Tokyo, Japan, on October 11th, 2017, by Shingo Matsuoka.
Personnel:
Roger Turner-snare drum, tom tom, cymbals, metal, wood
"This masterful performance was born of the meeting of two master improvisers, Kazuo Imai of Japan and Roger Turner of the UK. Imai, who studied with Masayuki Takayanagi and Takehisa Kosugi, is one of Japan's leading improvisers and guitarists. Turner is a drummer and percussionist who has been actively performing throughout the world since the beginning of the 1970s. His Japan tour in October 2017 included concerts with Japanese musicians in various locations, including his performance with Kazuo Imai at Bar Isshee in Tokyo on October 11. In this duo concert, Imai played one nylon string guitar, while Turner used only snare drum, tom tom, cymbals, metal and wood instead of setting up a complete drum set; and the sound was acoustic, without electric amplification. The overall sound is somewhat controlled, in keeping with the nylon string guitar volume; and within that context the musicians' interacting sounds are remarkably diverse, dynamic, and beautiful. The concert's first set (Disc 1, 32 minutes) and second set (Disc 2, 36 minutes) are documented in their entirety on this album."-Ftarri
"Three discs (well, four actually) [1 | 2 | 3] of duet improvisations, each involving a Japanese musician playing with a European musician. [...] a meeting of Kazuo Imai (nylon string guitar) and Roger Turner (snare drum, tom tom, cymbals, metal, wood) [...] recorded in Japan. The music is long enough for a single CD (in total sixty-eight minutes), but as Roger Turner said they were so different sets that night in Tokyo, he wanted to separate discs. This is the world of more regular improvisation. Silence is not something they allow very much. Not in either set, that is.
Of the two, the first one is the most conventional in terms of improvisation. The guitar is tortured in a mild way, no chords are played, just a very free range of sounds and something similar can be said of Turner's drum. It rattles about and it sounds very solid. Fragmented playing that is, but solid in its execution.
On the second disc everything is bit more heavy. There is much controlled aggression going on here, unleashed upon those instruments. Turner picks occasionally up a bow and treats his cymbals with much vigour, while Imai hits those strings with a similar attack. [...]"-Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly