Mochizuki Harutaka, Suishounofune, Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Ensemble
Le Weekend Day 4,
Tolbooth Theatre, Stirling
29/05/05
Page one of two

2005’s Le Weekend closed with an all-Japanese evening. First up was outsider multi instrumentalist and singer Mochizuki Harutaka. Crouching over his instruments, Harutaka positively quaked as he delivered fractured songs that fell somewhere between lullabies and laments. At times he shook visibly, as if just getting the music out was a fight. He hunkered, crab like, over his alto sax, huffing and gasping. He seemed to be using maximum effort to make the absolute minimum of sound. His body contorted in a paroxysm he produced a range of high pitched squeaks (like an old steam kettle), pops and angry scribbling that recalled the likes of John Zorn and Anthony Braxton. Elsewhere his disjointed piano playing-all fits and starts, with sudden crashing interjections- reminded me of Ran Blake’s askew, melody-puncturing style. The songs sounded simple, almost sentimental but were delivered with cringe inducing intensity.  He finished with a lengthy, improvised percussion /guitar duet with a drummer whose name I didn’t catch. Scraping at his guitar, Harutaka produced brittle, high register sounds that were as fragile as his vocals.

If you Google Harutaka, you get nothing that makes any sense. The guy apparently came out of nowhere, complete with his arsenal of intensely personal sounds. I was kind of glad I couldn’t understand the lyrics, because, wherever Harutaka came from, it clearly wasn’t a happy place to be.

The second set of the evening came from Tokyo trio Suishouno fune. Like Harutaka, they were performing their first UK show. They played desolate, slow motion stoner sound-scapes from the same dark space as the likes of Keiji Haino. Slow, chiming strums built up in to dark, intense drones, like the sound of giant engines. There were echoes of the bleakest moments of the Velvet Underground. Guitarist Kageo provided a bedrock of distended rhythm lines, at times so drenched in reverb they sounded like Duane Eddy. Female guitarist and vocalist, Kurenai, supplied searing, sustain enhanced solos that recalled the likes of GodSpeed You Black Emperor and Mono.

For all their volume the trio were nimble footed, allowing their music to float in clouds rather than nailing it to the ground like so many of their ‘heavy’ western counterparts. The music breathed, possibly due to the lack of bottom end instrumentation but also because drummer Jun Hurada has a canny ear for playing round and through the guitars. He provided energetic and sympathetic counterpoint without the need to lock the band in to tight rhythms.

As the intensity peaked, there came the almost inevitable feedback meltdown. But for all their Fushitsusha style black-hole chaos, distant melodies were always audible. At times they sounded like David Lynch’s dreamy soundtracks re-imagined by aliens. The feint echoes of reverb drenched guitars coupled with the high, keening lullaby vocals of Pirako Kurenai sounding like Julee Cruise beamed in from outer space.