CD2枚組
meenna-967
限定300部
2020年9月13日発売
価格 2,500 円 + 税
Online CD ショップ
Disc 1
Disc 2
作曲：杉本拓 ("nexus 1"、nexus 3"、"nexus 4"、"nexus-5"、"nexus-6"、"solo for the E string of guitar")、Fredrik Rasten ("ripples"、"dyadic canon"、"duality"、"3 / 5")
左から右に
Denis Sorokin：アコースティック・ギター、ピッチ・パイプ ("live improvisation"、"3 / 5" で)、共鳴箱付き音叉の弓弾き ("duality" で)
杉本拓：アコースティック・ギター
Fredrik Rasten：アコースティック・ギター、ヴォイス ("live improvisation" で)
ライナー・ノート
These recordings were mostly made during the daytime at the residency place and concert venue Petersburg Art Space in Moabit, Berlin. While we were recording, people would sometimes show up in the kitchen area on the other side of the room for a coffee break, probably not aware that we were recording music for a potential album. Even though this could have led to frustration and many retakes, it ended up quite unproblematic, and it was nice how it made us aware of both the fragility of our musical activity and the fact that our playing was just one of many activities happening in the building and our surroundings.
Taku's pieces are wonderful, with melodies intertwining into "endless" streams of harmonic combinations, and the musical sensibilities of both Denis and Taku are very inspiring to me. I am very happy with this trio and looking forward to more musical and social meetings with Denis and Taku in the future.
Some notes on my compositions:
"ripples" is a piece for any number of guitars tuned in a 13-limit just tuning, only played with the natural harmonics of the open strings. In our trio version the slight out-of-tune-ness of the strings creates interferences that remind me of water ripples. These "sound ripples" are produced by the harmonic relations and their slight deviations from the intended ratios. The thin line between periodic, just intonation sounds and slightly beating/interfering sounds is an area where the human aspect of playing meets the sound phenomena produced by the physical materials themselves, and where the details of sound can unfold in unpredictable, ephemeral ways.
"dyadic canon" consists of three lines with eight dyads each, played slowly in the form of a canon. This is one of my few pieces or musical endeavors that does not have any specific tuning aspect.
"duality" is a piece based on two justly tuned tuning forks. Some years ago I bought a bunch of tuning forks and randomly cut the prongs to have a multitude of different "acoustic sine waves" available. When I later started exploring intonation and harmonic space more in depth, I found that two of the tuning forks were very close to forming an 11/10 ratio. I did some filing on one of the forks to get the relation more in tune with 11/10, used a wooden wine box as a resonator, and by activating the forks with a bow, I had a very basic instrument. This instrument led me to "duality," a piece that alternates between interfering pitch relations with occasional cluster chords, and textural sounds.
"3 / 5" is essentially a solo guitar piece consisting of three chordal melodies, with different possible "surroundings." In this realization I play the melodies while Denis (playing pitch pipes and radio noise) and Taku (on bowed and plucked guitar) improvise along with them. The written guitar part is based on a tuning where some relations are 3-limit (Pythagorean) and some are 5-limit, together producing resonant chords with a slight microtonal flavor.
Fredrik Rasten
It is really a pleasure for me to play with Denis and Fredrik as a guitar trio. When we met for the first time in Berlin, we became friends immediately and I found that we all had the same great interest: just intonation and things related to it. The guitar is a fretted instrument, so some special techniques, e.g., bending, slide bar, harmonics, anomalous tuning, must be required to play those microtones. Denis and Fredrik are skilled musicians who can handle those techniques very well, which you may notice when listening to the tracks of the CD.
To say something regarding my compositions, every single piece of the two series "nexus" and "solo for strings" is a solo piece and also can be played with any other pieces of the two series. While all the pitches are fixed, the lengths of the tones depend somewhat on the performers. The latter characteristic will work well especially when the pieces are played together. I am interested in this kind of relationship between performers.
Unfortunately, in Japan there are almost no guitarists who are interested in my guitar compositions and no composers whose guitar music might interest me at present. I need to work with Denis and Fredrik. I love the trio. If the coronavirus had not happened, we could have met and played together somewhere, perhaps in Berlin, this spring or summer. I am really looking forward to seeing and playing with them.
杉本拓
The first time I got to know the name Taku Sugimoto was in David Toop's book Haunted Weather. Later I listened to his guitar quartet and some solo sets on the internet, and from that point in time Sugimoto became a very important musician and composer for me. Many years later, when I had already played experimental music (mostly Wandelweiser related music), I wrote an e-mail to Sugimoto (after getting his address from guitarist colleague Cristián Alvear). I asked Taku if he could send me some of his scores. Some days later Taku answered me. I was really a fan of Taku, so I was very happy to get a response from him. I started to play his "solo 1," which later was recorded for another Ftarri release, Guitars. Taku said that he wanted to play with me and that I should come to Tokyo. I was astonished. Taku, the composer who was like a god to me, wanted to play with me! I contacted the Japanese embassy and they told me what Taku and I should do to get me a visa to Japan. I am Russian, and it's not so easy to travel, so it turned out to be quite complicated to get a visa. We concluded that it would be easier to meet in Europe. My friend Sasha worked as an art director for the concert venue Petersburg Art Space in Berlin, and he offered to arrange a concert for us. Finally we met in Berlin, where Taku and I played two sets with Johnny Chang and Sasha Markvart.
The second time we played together was five months later, with Fredrik Rasten, again in Berlin. This record was made exactly at that time. I knew Fredrik from before; he was a friend of my friends. He had visited Saint Petersburg two or three times and I had been to his concerts. I liked his sound and his music, and Fredrik is a very nice man and I was very glad that we now got to play together in this trio.
Our friend Joey Gavin took some live concert photos and sent them to me, saying that maybe they would be nice as cover artwork for our future album, and Taku offered to use my drawings for the inside cover artwork. My good friend Sergei mixed and mastered our sound and Suzuki-san released our work, and now you can listen to our music from those spring days in Berlin.
P.S.
The third time we met to play in Berlin, Fredrik, Taku, Stefan Thut and I went to an Indian restaurant, and Fredrik and I ordered the same food, since I trusted his taste in food because we are both vegetarians. Fredrik asked for spicy and I asked for not too spicy, since I had already had some experiences with Indian food. Our plates got mixed up and we both realized that we were eating from the wrong plates - Fredrik's was not spicy, but the plate I got was like fire. We changed the plates, so I am still alive.
Denis Sorokin
東京の杉本拓、ロシア、サンクトペテルブルクの Denis Sorokin、そしてノルウェイ、オスロの Fredrik Rasten。2019年3月上旬、ドイツ、ベルリンでこの3人のギタリストが顔を合わせた。3人は同じギタリストであるばかりでなく、音楽的方向性も似ていたことからすぐに意気投合。3月7〜9日の３日間にわたり、Petersburg Art Space Berlin で録音をおこなった。本アルバムには、この時に録音したトリオによる演奏10トラックをCD2枚に収録している。
この録音のために、杉本拓は6曲、Fredrik Rasten は4曲の作曲作品を用意。杉本の曲は複数の曲の演奏を1トラックに収めているものがあり、6曲の演奏を5トラックに収録している。残りの1トラックでは、即興演奏を披露。3人ともすべての演奏でアコースティック・ギターを使用。Denis Sorokin はピッチ・パイプや音叉も使うトラックがあり、即興演奏では Fredrik Rasten のヴォイスも時折聞こえてくる。全体に曲と演奏が見事にマッチし、アコースティック・ギターによるアンサンブルの美しさは際立っていて、聴く者に必ずや心の安らぎをもたらしてくれるだろう。
杉本拓は国内外で高い評価と人気を得た作曲家 / ギター奏者であり、Ftarri と Meenna レーベルから既に多くのCDリリースがある。Denis Sorokin は特にヴァンデルヴァイザー派の作曲作品の演奏で知られるギター奏者。Meenna レーベルより2019年リリースの杉本拓CD『Guitars』に参加している。Fredrik Rasten も実験音楽の分野で活躍するギター奏者 / 作曲家で、Edition Wandelweiser (ドイツ) や Sofa (ノルウェイ) などのレーベルからリリースがある。
