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RECORDING INFORMATION |
Poseidon Records: PRF-013
Musea: FBGB 4497.AR
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| COMMENTS & REVIEWS |
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Nuno
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Published on: 12 Feb 2004
After the lengthy, extensive and excellent description of this album by my good friend Doug, I really find it hard to provide with even more worthy information on Kasa Kasa, the opening opus by Japanese trio Ausia.
Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize, and truly call the readers attention for the exceptional role that each of the intervening musicians play in this eccentric (to the highest degree) release:
While the guitar work by Source Adachi is not inferior, by any means, to that he presents in the excellent Adachi Kyodai, really maintaining focus and quality that cannot be ignored, the fact is that in most of the album that acoustic guitar fingering and tremendous riffs tend to stay in the shadow of the other instruments that evolve in the album. It serves as a flying carpet upon which the most “musically felt” magic flourishes and swirls, like a cornucopia of sounds freely erupting from a tight container.
Violin playing by Tsuboy (also with KBB and String Arguments delivers a slightly different approach, when compared with his other 2003 releases. Here all the eventual knots that would tie him to a confined musical structure are detached and he freely experiments with basing sounds, melodic textures or violent explosions that can reduce to debris any sense of pre concept direction or structure. So easily can he dwell in background tapestries upon which Yukihiro shines, like he sets the stakes much higher by confronting the Flute with mesmerizing and mayhemic duels.
The Flute work (here called Recorder, shinobue and dengakubue) may well be the central piece in this album. If sometimes it plays in a logic, calm and melodic way, most of the times it evokes bizarre compositional constructions by accelerating in an unexplainable frantic way, to the point of sound velocity (I even believe he may have experience accelerations beyond that point…eheh). If he was playing guitar, I would categorize this album as shredding guitar fusion…
The resulting sound is, at the least, unique. By compromising with world music, ethnic Japanese, free jazz and acoustic prog (sometimes close to pastural Jethro Tull, for which there is a cover version on Mother Goose), Ausia do deliver a one in a kind result and a real odd experience for the prog/fusion explrers out there.
It can be tiring, not in the sense of getting tired off, but in the sense of the listener experiencing difficulties in absorbing everything that is going on in a single exposure to this record. It needs several listens to finally get the picture, but…oh…if this is not innovative and refreshing, I don’t know what can be!
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DBSilver
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Published on: 18 Nov 2003
Ausia's basic mix is recorder, violin and guitar all played accousically. While some elements hint at folk or world, there is also a lot of fusion elements ranging from both ECM style jazz-fusion to more frentic RIO influenced sounds. Because the contained music is so diverse, this album can sound at times like Blackmore's Night on one end of the spectrum and a highly intense acoustic fusion jam on the other.
I am partial to the recorder having received one of quality some years back as a gift. Over the years I have purchased 23 CDs featuring recorder - with performers like Michaela Petri and Marion Verbruggen in both avant/jazz and classical musical settings. Recorder CDs are not easy to find so that should give you some indication of my interest level. On Kasa Kasa, Yukihiro Isso plays with a style and sound I have not heard before on the recorder which is more akin to Ian Anderson's style - that of 'over-blowing' the instrument. As a result, the warmth of this band's sound does not normally come from the wooden wind blown recorder where I would have expected it, but instead that responsibility is shared by the guitar and violin. That is not to say Isso does not play with great skill or emotion because he absolutely does. It is simply an unexpected turn to have the music displayed in such a way where the warmth of the recorder itself is covered intentionally or otherwise in the band's overall sound. One thing for sure , you have to hear to believe the interaction between the violin and recorder in the track Kasa Ksa. Another thing that is impressive is the speed of Isso's play - making recorder runs sound like runs on a keyboard at times.
On 2 songs Adachi sings (as he does on Adachi Kyodai) and while the vocals here work better, this is not a stong point. Also as with Adachi Kyodai, Adachi brings forward an acoustic Jethro Tull song, Mother Goose which is very interesting to hear in this mix although for me the vocals distract. Aside from the vocals - it is Adachi's guitar which I think stands out on this album more so than the other outstanding musicians. This is not to take anything away from the outstanding violin work of Tsuboy and wind work of Isso.
This album features a song, Lost On The Way Home that I cannot get enough of. A slow piece, emotional, dynamic, and powerful it alone is worth the price of admission. But it is not the only very good song on this album. While overall I personally do not like it as much as Akihisa Tsuboy / Natsuki Kido Duo I do like it more than Adachi Kyodai which places this recording well into the zone of "money well spent".
In this way the album has much in common with Era by Akihisa Tsuboy / Natsuki Kido Duo and with Adachi Kyodai which featured Source K Adachi as well as with Shakti, Ralph Towner, Oregon and a whole family of world/folk/fusion and it is a very good one.
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| TRACKS |
CREDITS
(click to view performer credits) |
PROGGNOSIS SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
(click to view Release Page) |
- Vision That You Give
- Night Dance
- When That I Was A Little Tiny Boy
- Indian Rain
- Housewarming In Alaska
- Mother Goose
- Short Summer In Valhalla
- Lost On The Way Home
- Kasa Kasa
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