Heinz Geisser & Guerino Mazzola - Live at Airegin

Bill Barton, Signal To Noise

If, back in the day, you got up one morning, knocked back a couple of quadruple-shot espressos, did a few lines of Peruvian marching dust, then took a ride with Miles Davis in his Ferrari, you may have felt a little like this music sounds. To call this music high-energy would be an understatement: it's wired, amped, Fire Music that rages like an inferno. Long-time compatriots, drummer Geisser and pianist Mazzola are both incessant, loquacious improvisers who tend to operate at a light-speed intensity that demands deep listening and an attention span geared to long-form creativity. It's demanding music that comes at you like a tsunami. This download-only release was recorded live at Jazz Club Airegin, Yokohama, Japan on October 10, 2004. "The Skyliner" is Geisser and Mazzola in duo for 34:28 and "Nu" (26:34) adds guitarist Takayuki Kato and vocalist Yuki Saga.

At just over three minutes, Geisser's solo trap-set introduction to "The Skyliner" sustains interest throughout and has a structural and melodic continuity missing from much solo percussion. When Mazzola enters, it doesn't take long for the density and drive to build to an explosive energy torrent that doesn't let up for the full half-hour. The pianist has stated that he seeks "expressivity of the hierarchical and ramified anatomy of time." Whether or not one can assimilate the theories at work from this Renaissance man of music, computer music, theoretical physics, crystallography, topography and brain research is immaterial: the music here speaks for itself most eloquently. "Nu" is a different Möbius strip all together: Saga's chattering wordless vocals and Kato's wild electronic abstractions add yet another dimension to the duo's universe.