2-CD set
(Improvised Music from Japan, IMJ-508/9)
Released in December 2003
Purchase price in Japan: 2,500 yen (tax not included)
(For purchase outside of Japan, prices vary.)
Disc 1
Disc 2
Vienna resident Radu Malfatti, who turned 60 in December 2003, is a trombonist and composer with a long and impressive career. In the nineties he established the unique compositional/improvisational style, using very few sounds, that he continues to develop. Thirty-something (at the time of the CD's release) guitarist Taku Sugimoto has since the late nineties followed a similar path, pursuing a playing style marked by extreme sonic spareness. His work has received critical acclaim in Japan and abroad and greatly influenced many young Japanese musicians. Their 20-plus-year age difference notwithstanding, the two artists played together in Austria several times in that period and made a powerful impact on the Japanese improvised music scene with their first Japan tour in December 2002.
Futatsu is a two-CD set bringing together one studio piece and two live-performance recordings. The former is a mix (by Malfatti) of two recordings made separately in 2003 in Tokyo and Vienna. The live recordings are of peformances that took place in Vienna in 2003 and on their Japan tour of 2002. In the studio work, sounds are set down one by one on a background of absolute silence. Despite settings that take in background noise and the sound of passing cars, their live performances are as quiet as ever. This amazing recording will give you a new perspective on the relationship between sound and silence.
