After 2020’s album ‘2527’, guitarist Takashi Masubuchi 増渕顕史 brought a new duo cassette on Zoomin’ Night, with saxophone musician Tom Soloveitzik. Some moments from Tokyo’s quiet improvisation music scene in 2022. Sometimes the duo sounds like a trio.
Some memories from Tom:
I first met Takashi in a duo performance by Seijiro Murayama & Tetuzi Akiyama at Permian. I recall that the small underground venue was packed and that the interplay between these two great musicians was vivid, tense and loud. After the performance we scheduled to meet and play at a later date. There’s always some aura (in my mind) when two improvising musicians meet for the first time, as if there is still a chance for an infinite amount of possibilities. It felt natural for me when Takashi played the first note on his guitar; We were listening together to the sound spreading around the room, the silences between the notes and our breath. The first note (of our first meeting) set the tone for others to come, paving a way that is narrower or rather more determined in its possibilities, nevertheless it was a direction that seemed well suited for us. After our first meeting we convened to meet again, this time before a trio performance of both of us with Toshimaru Nakamura at Permian. Second meetings are always more difficult. There’s already a mutual concept of music making and memory. During our recording session Toshimaru appeared in the room suddenly. I felt then, as a newcomer to Tokyo, that I had the privilege to meet different generations of musicians from the improvised scene in Japan.
A couple of months after our meetings at Permian whilst visiting Kobe Modern Art Museum, I stumbled upon a picture by the American artist Charles R. Knight from 1931 titled ‘Permian Period’, referring to a geological period almost 299 million years ago by the same name. In it, there’s an imaginative human trial to depict something of the dinosaur and its long gone aura. It made me think of several periods, anthropocentric or not, that coincide and continue to proceed backwards and forward at the same time, in places that we inhibit, are present and make sounds.
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Tom Soloveitzik is an Israeli musician and artist based in Tokyo. He works with the materiality of sound, the practice of listening, and the potentiality of recording [a ‘field’] through performance and writing.
https://www.tomsoloveitzik.net/
Takashi Masubuchi is a Tokyo-based guitarist and improviser. Masabuchi has been playing guitar in a variety of groups since his teens. He began performing improvisation as a member of Pelktopia, his project with Hironobu Shimazawa (launched in 2008). Since 2018 he has been devoting himself to acoustic guitar performance. In that year he released two solo albums, R,R,R (CD, Headlights Recordings, Portugal) and Disappearing Foliage (cassette tape, Senri Records, Japan). He also releases collaborative albums with other musicians and contributes pieces to compilation recordings.
Tom Soloveitzik: tenor saxophone
Takashi Masubuchi: guitar, harmonica
Recorded on Oct 7 and Dec 4, 2022, Permian, Tokyo
Mixed by Takashi Masubuchi
Mastered by Hiroyuki Ura
Designed by Takashi Masubuchi
Image by Valery Bolotin
