When Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura, Christian Pruvost and Peter Orins started the collective quartet Kaze around 2011, the Japanese-French quartet undertook several adjustments and side alleys (including adding laptop whiz Ikue Mori for a spell) but the core group has consistently used original material contributed by each member as a framework around which improvisation occurred.
That’s now changed with their eighth album Unwritten (Circum-Disc/Libra Records). Fujii, Tamura, Pruvost and Orins had decided to make a record by going on stage with no material and create from nothing as the tape rolled. Given the telepathy that’s developed among these musicians, the high degree of improvisation already imbedded in the composed pieces and the high level of instinctual prowess each possess, it wasn’t destined to be a huge stretch to pull off but it remains enticing to hear them do it, anyway. This needed to happen because they’re just too capable not to do it.
So at a concert performance in Pruvost’s and Orins’ hometown of Lille, France, Kaze reeled off three instant compositions of varying lengths but aal which does the unexpected in ways that delight.
“Thirteen Years” most likely refers to their time together as Kaze, and they put that familiarity to the test composing for well over half an hour in real time. What you hear is not musicians under pressure to make something happen, but rather, letting the vibe come to them. It’s very quiet for the first eight minutes, Tamura and Pruvost combining with Orins to generate random percussive sounds. As the quartet comes together, Fujii chooses that moment to assert herself, raining down a cavalcade of notes and chords, amply supported by Orins’ tom-tom patters and then the sudden stop arrives. The trumpets and drums restarts, patiently builds up another phase with gorgeous exchanges of trumpet expressions and shortly afterwards, Fujii fills out the grand melody that Pruvost and Tamura suggested. Some more atonal and barren passages before settling into a peaceful, celestial one that grows restless toward the ending.
“We Waited” has slower-developing cycles of stillness-buildup-release but stayed fixed on a single chord motif for much of the time. It’s Orins, however, who pulls the group out of the pattern, when his tentative patters turn into a full-throttle gallop and the other three respond in kind.
“Evolving” is an entirely percussional exhibit full of non-conventional tones for the first half of it; the drum kit itself doesn’t even arrive until went into it. Fujii’s piano is lured in with some bad intentions and finally the horns get in on the action, too, but that compelling percussion parade stays up front.
If I wasn’t informed beforehand that the music of Unwritten was made up on the spot, I could have easily assumed that this music had involved some forethought because it progresses in a logical manner with several moments of melodic bliss, and the musicians react to each other as if they all know what is coming.
Unwritten will release on February 9 2024. Pre-order/order it from Bandcamp or Amazon.
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