Takuroku update: Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Taku Sugimoto

Wednesday 28 July 2021

I had to throw out my original review of Tatsuhisa Yamamoto’s ano kane wo narasu. In that one I enthused over his superb handling of electronics, marvelling at how he let simple drones build and expand through judicious use of reverb and gain to open up new expanses of tonality and colour throughout the half-hour composition without ever losing a tight focus on the piece’s conceptual foundations. Tonal layers evolve into timbral changes and recede, allowing new sections to emerge with a subtle addition of noise to give the piece an internal motivation. There’s a special skill here, not just in technical management but in musical judgement, in how to let more happen through leaving things alone. Then I read the release notes and, uh, looked at the cover art and well shit-a-brick turns out it’s an album of solo percussion playing, with Yamamoto using bowed cymbals and gongs throughout. So as it happens, there is a whole load of technical skill going on here with Yamamoto maintaining timbral consistency and harmonic momentum, as well as a greater musical discretion in maintaining variety while resisting a larger, distracting range of possible sounds which would otherwise have been technologically proscribed. Recorded as a single performance, some delay system is evidently at work, used to great effect near the end to build up a fascinating, troubling drone of aggregated and compounded tones. However it’s made, it’s a special piece of work.

I’ve told the Taku Sugimoto gig anecdote before, so I’ll refer you to my previous review. That time, as well as his own work, Sugimoto had recorded Bruno Duplant’s lEttEr to tAku in a Park, combining sparse guitar notes with al fresco field recording. He has now recorded his own compositional approach to this soundworld for Takuroku, analytically titled G major (2, 3, 5, 7 / III, IV, V) / VII / G major (2, 3, 5, 7 / III, IV, V). Recorded in two sessions in Tokyo this year, Sugimoto plays electric guitar and, much less actively, acoustic. The amplification is modest, enough to make audible the resonance of the muted harmonics that make up most of Sugimoto’s playing here, in irregularly scattered moments. The city is distant, a faint roar that rises and falls like the surf. There are a few birds in the area, perhaps more if they come and go. The slow pulse of background sound gives a regularity that might have made Sugimoto more (relatively) extroverted here. His guitar playing, while gentle, is more free here than usual, making more of a mark against the lulling backdrop. Where his guitar has previously been present largely through its absence, here the pauses become more of a matter of phrasing. At one time the field recording drops away: still, we can hear something strangely pastoral in the unhurried pacing of the sounds, at odds with the forbidding urban setting and technical contrivances. For now, we can enjoy this for what it is and worry about Sugimoto’s potential slide into stylistic decadence later.

Alvear plays Sugimoto; Sugimoto plays Duplant

Wednesday 28 March 2018

I went a Taku Sugimoto gig in a community centre in Footscray about fifteen years ago and he didn’t do shit. For an hour or so he sat there, guitar on his lap, adjusting the volume knob on his amplifier once or twice. We were all partly listening, partly waiting, straining to hear if there would be anything to hear. We watched to see if anything was happening that we hadn’t heard and so we listened to hear if anything was happening that we didn’t see*. He’s playing tonight with the singer Minami Saeki at a club a few blocks away from me but I’m not going, mostly because it’s miserable out and I’m a bit hungover and will be impatient and inattentive. He’s playing in Sheffield tomorrow night and you should probably go.

Instead, I have been listening to two new recordings of him playing. On one, he plays Bruno Duplant’s composition lEttEr to tAku. On the other, he is joined by Cristián Alvear for a guitar duet composed by Sugimoto. On paper, both pieces may well look much the same: single notes, scattered here and there. For lEttEr to tAku, recorded in a Park in Tokyo last year, Sugimoto is credited with “guitar, small amplifier, bow, park”. Guitar notes are played and heard, in what would be a splendid isolation from each other. As at that Footscray gig, there is an attentiveness, a precision in how he plays and in how he doesn’t play. Is he responding to the sounds in his environment? Duplant says “Taku played a lot with them while respecting the score” (emphasis mine). It seems that the piece is a field recording, with the sounds of the park and the surrounding city taking up most of the attention. Yet the guitar is always present, as much in its anticipation as its sound. The guitar sounds themselves are gentle, but pure and clear against the indeterminate tapestry of sounds. The guitar defines the context, allowing the city to become a musical accompaniment, but also acts as a frame, elevating the background noise to the foreground of attention. It’s like an aural work of urban environmental art, a small intervention that transforms the substance of a piece of everyday life.

Sugimoto’s guitar duet, simply titled h, is closely related to his songs with Minami Saeki which I’m not hearing tonight. h was also recorded in Tokyo last year, but indoors, at a concert. The piece is essentially one of Sugimoto’s songs, with the voice part transcribed for guitar. He and Cristián Alvear each play slow, wandering melodies that weave an irregular counterpoint between the two instruments. (Alvear’s playing has that same quiet, imperturbable patience as Sugimoto, as heard on his recordings of Sarah Hennies and d’incise.) The voice part plays in harmonics, against the more fully sounded notes of the other guitar. Both parts have sufficient lightness as to almost merge and colour each other at times. When the two overlap, tiny differences in intonation emerge (the guitar’s frets enforce a type of equal temperament, at odds with the harmonic overtones). Halfway through it feels like it’s about to outstay its welcome but it never does. The colouration, unpredicatble melody and irregular exchanges and overlappings between the two instruments holds a sort of quiet fascination.

* This is another example of seeing and hearing music.