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Kazumoto Endo And Kaori Komura – In The Cave
The work of Kazumoto Endo often strikes these earholes as sharply percussive. Sharp kinetic chops, explosive bursts, biting stabs, punching in and out with pointed, piercing, precision and poise. This is especially notable on the 2011 release Switches & Knobs, for which the preeminent Endoist talents of Kazuma Kubota are enlisted in the delivery of kinetic chop after explosive burst after biting stab, a twice-pronged powerhouse of pointy-headed piercing percussives. Tell you what though, I'll do you one better. Howzabout enlisting the legit talents of a legit Samul nori percussionist in the name of one Kaori Komura. And then, like, just go bat-shit crazy with the sharp, kinetic chops, bursts, stabs, crashes, clangs, bangs, and whangs. Like, that would be rad.
No word on where these improv sessions took place– presumably a cave of some sort– but the sparsely collaged b/w photos there from are pretty goshdarn classy. What we get is a good eyeful of Ms Komura, done to the nines in trad Korean regalia, clearly having a blast with her four-part MO of traditional drums and gongs. Plus sexy poses of Endo's arm working away at the familiar souped-up springed washboard thingy, aka the Killer Bug. Skilled improvisers, these, you can tell just by looking. But the earholes second the motion. These are the sorts that seem to know instinctively just when space is required– and given the percussive proposition in play that would be more often than not– and just when to pile on in frenzies of ecstatic fever-bliss.
Those of the harshheaded inclination are advised to do two things: turn it up, bring the noise. In giving the percussionist her cave space to really shine, Endo drops it down a notch, or at least shall we say, the two performers are in perfect balance. No shrieking blasts of all-out noise to mercilessly overwhelm and crush the percussion. In fact, turn it up to the requisite levels and the harshest moments are delivered by the gongs. And make no mistake, at the requisite levels, these gongs are are daaaaamn harsh. Excruciating reams of bright, piercing, metal-on-metal jiiiiiinnnng, sharp enough to cut holes in the damn cave walls. I go on cuz, y'see, the first few sessions with the disc I had it up pretty loud. Pretty loud. And, despite the inability of the Endo noise to really cut through, it was all pretty impressive stuff. But on instinctively cranking to ridonkulous levels the shit just...comes ALIVE. Huge spiky smorgasboards of brilliant texture, leaping out from all corners of the cave, filling the space with orgiastic blisses of teaming life– or better, suggestive of whole new spaces and worlds to inhabit, with sound, color, flavor, fury.
The opening bangs are delivered, as is appropriate, by the pleasingly tangy rasp of straight-up Samul nori, sharply struck gongs glinting brightly along softly glowing cave-walls, slowly undulating electro-rumbles emerging from the attack. A second, more robust drum'n'gong banging-fit is underscored by full-up flatulent burble and then attack the third precipitates a properly buggered stab of classic, palate-cleansing, killer shriekage. Pregnant pause. Deep breath now. Ready, steady, on my ma- blammity-slammity-ker-screech! Plenty of nicely measured breaks for air, or for regrouping of energies, in the moment availing of temporarily scorched 'holes the opportunity to bask in the warm afterglow of furious heat. The tension in these moments is palpable, almost as though one is just daring the other to break the silence, a delicate dangerous dance, a contest of wills with no clear victor. (For what it's worth my money's on the one with the mona lisa smile. She seems to know something we don't.) The way and the how of the silences being navigated is where it all comes together, and falls apart, in aridly arrayed dis-arrray, as though the listener were tasked with scrying to divine the deafening nothings between the noise. And I'd get there, too, if someone would just cease with the unrelenting racket. Jeeez.
Aside from the silence and the screech, there are intervals too of more and less restrained tapping, bonking, ding-a-linging, sometimes brutally buggered to oblivion, other times freed to elaborate wild whims of whippity-whammed wiggout. All the while hastily goading the next 'hole-destroying faux silence irradiator. It's all very spare, one might surmise, but in comes searing feedback, analog scorch riding the tailwinds, hammering gong-peaks duly maxing the smoking intensities. This is, pretty much how it all plays out, ancient and storied bum-boo-biddidy bee-bop clangily-bangily, necessarily amplified to the nth needn't I emphasize this enough indelicately wormholed through the presently spastic and frenzied 'hole rupturing fury of the Prime Bugger himself.
And yes, by the by, the word spastic is plainly in play. I couldn't speak for Ms Komura but far as Endo the word would not generally have entered the lexicon at least since the studiously studio'd Brick & Mortar, replaced in the more recent improvised incarnation by vocabulary more owed to discipline and deliberation. A delicate dance of two performers in perfect balance, but riddled with jarring rips, jagged screeches, metal bashings, jing-ling bells, lightly tapped excursions, sharp bites of piercing feedback, plentiful pure-bred percussive pounding, a colorful study in dynamic contrast, more than sufficient to keep the attention perfectly off-balance, and perfectly engrossed from bang to clang to bung-screecher-scritch-screee-bingily-booby-booby-ker-blong.
Digest spew:
This, is a banger. A binger. A bonger. A killer bum-boo-biddidy bee-bop-buggering BLAST from the past, ancient and storied Korean percussions hammered through the prime bugged-out wormhole to a presently spastic and frenzied 'hole rupturing fury. Turn it up, way up, bring the harsh, way harsh, at the requisite levels extracting from upper-edged gong-peaks excruciating reams of bright, piercing, metal-on-metal jiiiiiinnnng, sharp enough to cut holes in the damn cave walls. In the many and pregnant pauses, bask in the warm afterglow of furious heat. The tension is palpable, a delicate dangerous dance, a contest of wills with no clear victor. Scry in these cracks the divine deafening nothingness between the noise, then ride frenzied pile-ons to the prophesied ecstasies of scorched fever-bliss.
