02/01/2004

The Wire , UK

www.thewire.co.uk

Uchihashi Kazuhisa & Gene Coleman Storobo Imp (False Walls / fw04)

In 2001, American bass clarinettist Gene Coleman was in Tokyo, working as a
composition fellow under the aegis of the Japan-US Friendship Commission. A CD of Coleman's compositions, Yago, is forthcoming from Wergo, and others are in preparation at Durian and Grob. But he also favours open improvisation, though with a compositional bias, and his likeminded Japanese collaborator on Storobo Imp. is former Ground Zero guitarist Kazuhisha Uchihashi. They first played together a year earlier in Vienna, courtesy of saxophonist Helge Hinteregger, and established an immediate musical rapport. In May 2001, having undertaken warm-up gigs in Kobe and Osaka, Uchihashi and Coleman visited Storobo Studio, Tokyo, to record this set of improvisations.

On two of the longest tracks, Uchihashi plays prepared guitar and makes sparing but telling use of electronics. Five tracks, most of them brief, feature him on daxophone, the wooden-tongued, uniquely sonorous instrument invented by Hans Reichel. Other musicians play the daxophone and may even play it well, but Reichel's voicings are nearly always the best. Uchihashi's use of the instrument is, however, versatile, and in range and timbre the daxophone blends particularly well with the bass clarinet. Coleman mentions in his sleevenotes that he loves the way Uchihashi prepares and processes his guitar, and I do too. The expanded soundworld of textures and colours he gets from his strings invites Coleman to produce his most exploratory playing. The lengthy final track is the best thing on the CD, an improvisation so wideranging and inventive that it dominates the set, making everything else seem, unjustly, a bit lacklustre.

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