Percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani's approach to music is visceral, non-linear and intuitively primitive, expressing an unusually strong spirit while avoiding any categorization. He creates sound via both traditional and extended percussion techniques, utilizing drums, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects and bells, as well as various sticks, kitchen tools and homemade bows, all of which manifest in an intense and organic music that represents a very personal sonic world. His approach is steeped in the sensibilities of free improvisation, experimental music, jazz, rock, and noise, and yet retains the sense of space and quiet beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.

Guitarist Shane Perlowin is a multi-disciplinary guitarist whose music straddles the boundaries between ever-deepening traditional study and primal idiosyncratic expression. His prolific discography as guitarist and composer of the experimental rock band Ahleuchatistas is appreciated around the world for its high intensity, dark beauty and unreserved expansiveness. Though a fixture in avant-garde circles, Perlowin expresses deep universal sentiments through rhythmic pulses, hypnotic textures, and simple melodic inventiveness. His approach is a hybrid of classical guitar, world music, blues, American primitivism, jazz, rock, and free improvisation.

Together, Nakatani & Perlowin share a chemistry that casts percussion and guitar in unique roles. At times, Perlowin ties the room together with insistent morphing arpeggios while Nakatani paints worlds of texture and frenzied activity by scraping and bowing. Lyrical passages caressed from nylon strings are punctuated by metallic events, whose simultaneity is reminiscent of the collaborations of John Cage and Merce Cunnigham. It is their respective years of improvising and craft-honing that prepared Nakatani and Perlowin for the music that would result from their encounter. And, it was fortune that permitted this particular musical moment to be documented.