In 2019, the Norwegian free jazz drummer Paal Nilssen-Love toured Japan with the American woodwind player Ken Vandermark. The results, selected from certain dates among their 16 performances, have now been issued as a seven-CD box set. Japan 2019 (PNL RECORDS PNL059 / AUDIOGRAPHIC RECORDS AGR-022) contains unedited recordings of these long-form energetic workouts in Tokyo, Onomichi, and Osaka. Along the way they also joined forces with three excellent Japanese musicians, Yuji Takahashi, Masahiko Satoh, and Akira Sakata.
It’s been amazing for me to hear the piano of veteran genius Yuji Takahashi on the Koen-Dori Classics (it’s a small basement venue in Shibuya, underneath a church) recordings here – he’s perhaps more widely known for his interpretations of classical and classical avant-garde music (Cage, Xenakis, Satie), but his elliptical and ingenious contributions here are a dazzling mix of Cecil Taylor’s unstoppable tidal waves with the thoughtful poise of Mal Waldron. He’s joined by fellow pianist Masahiko Satoh on the third and fourth discs, himself likewise an impressive jazz maverick whose career kicked off in 1969 with the Four Units album and has since taken in free improvisation (with Steve Lacy), soundtrack work, jazz-rock fusion, and working in many Japanese groups with unusual names, such as Medical Sugar Bank and Cosmic Pulsation Unity. Sheer delight to hear these two nimble pianos executing their delicate light-touch dance at the start of disc three, an episode where Nilssen-Love just about manages to restrain himself and confine himself to stick work and rimshots instead of his preferred heavy toms and bass kicks. This particular seascape is full of rich blue light, but even so the dark clouds on the horizon are approaching with terrible swiftness.
If it’s unfettered free-jazz blat you’re seeking, the 29:21 mins track on disc four should sugar up your ointment, where the players lock together in many unexpected combinations, throwing unusual geometric shapes while still somehow leaving space for each other’s wild gymnastics. So far this 5th December date is winning many of the rose-plaudits in the hatbox for this listener. Akira Sakata jumped onto the tour bus in Onomichi on the 17th of this fateful month, and it’s his also sax and Bb clarinet that join the tenor and clarinet of our man Vandermark across five wonderful cuts. I see this isn’t the very first time this particular Eastern titan has crossed rumbelows with Paal Nilssen-Love – for instance, there was the Semikujira album for Trost Records released in 2016.
Sakata’s presence seems to leads the trio down a more mournful and reflective path here, meaning that Disc Six doesn’t exhibit the same furious high-stakes pace of earlier parts of the set, but to me it’s just beautiful elegiac music, fitting for the darkened December days when it was recorded. Even when the temperature is raised by track three, the elegant Sakata slips effortlessly into Ornette Coleman mode, at the same time eliciting some very sympathetic “slippery” ejaculations from the very forthcoming Ken Vandermark.
At seven CDs, there’s a lot of powerful music to absorb here, but the assembled talent does not flag for a moment; recordings were made by Taishi Taruoka, Hideo Maki, and Junya Hirano; Lasse Marhaug co-produced the set. There’s also a thick booklet with excerpts from the tour diary of the American half of the act, richly illustrated with black and white photos confirming that the whole experience was full of wonder, mystery, exciting meetings, and unearthly visions. From 02/02/2024.