S. Fujii & Otomo Y. - Perpetual Motion

Kurt Gottschalk, MusicWorks

 

As an instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader, Satoko Fujii has been what might be called a forward-looking traditionalist for over twenty-five years of recording. She’s a sharp orchestrator with a gift for melody who has never seemed overly concerned with breaking rules or blurring boundaries. But during lockdown, she explored her home piano inside and out, finding her own voice within often-explored extended techniques. Perpetual Motion is an unexpected next step: It indulges Fujii’s newfound interest in less musical sounds, while inviting her radical counterpart Otomo Yoshihide into her take on convention.

Yoshihide’s brilliant and sometimes brutal discography includes his band Ground Zero’s reworking of Heiner Goebbels and Alfred 23 Harth’s Revolutionary Pekinese Opera and his New Jazz Orchestra’s interpretation of Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch. Often deploying extreme electronics and turntable techniques, he is heard here exclusively on electric guitar. It’s astonishing what a perfect meeting this is. While Yoshihide has certainly traded in pleasantries in the past (his lovely soundtrack to Tian Zhuangzhuang’s film The Blue Kite being just one example), it still turns the head to hear how adeptly he responds to Fujii’s lines. And she, although newer to the noise game, readily steps with him into some ferocious climaxes. The fifty-minute suite, recorded live and in person at Tokyo’s Pit Inn, couldn’t be more satisfying.