Featuring: Peter Brotzmann
Peter Brötzmann - tenor saxophone, tarogato
Toshinori Kondo - trumpet, electronics
Sabu Toyozumi - drums
| 1. To the Nature from the Heat | 15:52 |
| 2. First Monorail | 47:45 |
| 3. Memories of WUPPERTAL | 5:25 |
Michael Rosenstein - Point Of Departure
Japanese percussionist Yoshisaburo "Sabu" Toyozumi was an integral part of the first generation of free improvisers in Japan in the late 1960s along with Masayuki JoJo Takayanagi and Karou Abe, expanding his musical circle by travels to Chicago and Europe in the early 1970s as the only non-American member of the AACM. The musical bonds he formed helped him continue to foster a fertile scene in Japan including increasingly frequent visits by international musicians. Toyozumi has been particularly well served by the Lithuanian label NoBusiness records and their Chap Chap Series imprint. Over the course of the last decade, they’ve released a string of duos with musicians like Paul Rutherford, Abe, Wadada Leo Smith, Masahiko Satoh, Mats Gustafsson, and Peter Brötzmann along with an exhilarating trio with Takayanagi and Nobuyoshi Ino. Their recent batch of releases adds to that catalog with a trio by Brötzmann and Toshinori Kondo from 2016 along with a duo with Derek Bailey from 1987, in both cases bringing noteworthy live sessions from the vaults to light.
It's surprising that the trio of Peter Brötzmann, Toshinori Kondo, and Toyozumi took so long to come together. Kondo and Toyozumi had collaborated over many years with visiting Europeans like Tristian Honsinger and Peter Kowald and as part of Kondo’s Tibetan Blue Air Liquid Band. Kondo and Brötzmann worked together frequently starting in the early 1980s as part of the reed player’s Alarm session, a Japanese tour by ICP Orchestra, the Die Like a Dog quartet with William Parker and Hamid Drake, and in a variety of other projects. Brötzmann and Toyozumi played together when the ICP toured in 1982, again in 1987 with Derek Bailey and as a duo documented on the NoBusiness Triangle – Live at Ohm release. While the trio played together in 2014, Complete Link is their first recording, documenting a live set they performed at Roppongi Super Deluxe, Tokyo in 2016.
The three are incendiary across the entire 70-minute duration. Things kick off with Brötzmann’s immediately-identifiable baying roar and the drummer’s loose freely gamboling drums as the two build a simmering energy. When Kondo enters on shredded amplified trumpet four minutes in, the intensity is amped as tenor and trumpet trade phrases across Toyozumi’s coursing thunder. The trio sound is markedly different here from Die Like a Dog which was always anchored in the free-pulse undercurrent of Parker and Drake. Bereft of that underlying pulse, the music soars with an exuberant vigor with each of the members clearly reveling in the collective dynamism. The set consists of an opening 16-minute piece, a caterwauling 48-minute piece, and a five and a half minute closer.
Over the course of the first piece, one can sense the three probing the collective sound, pushing at the edges and measuring the way their playing coalesces. Settling into the longer “First Monorail,” they expand the arcs of the improvisation, riding squalling waves, opening up for extended solos, then diving back in with bellowing force. This works to particularly strong effect 15-minutes in, as tarogato, electronics-drenched trumpet, and surging drums converge into an eddying mass, setting the stage for a searing extended solo by Kondo, his clarion trumpet splintered into resonant shards across Toyozumi’s slashing cymbals then settling into shadings for an extended central section for keening reeds and buffeting drums. When Kondo comes back in, the massing of sound is orchestral in power and timbral depth. The shifting ebb and flow between brawny collective trio sections and reed/drums or trumpet/drums duos changes focus in the group while never flagging in commanding potency. The closing “Memories Of Wuppertal” provides a compact, pensive finale to the set, with flurried phrases by Brötzmann and Kondo whirring over the drummer’s fluid salvos. The set is a fitting tribute to the memories of Brötzmann and Kondo while providing another vital view of the musical depth and power of Toyozumi.
