Masayoshi Urabe ( 浦邊雅祥 ) - Ware Wa Seidai No Kyōjyō Zo ( 我は聖代の狂生ぞ ) (2003)

| Experimental | Free-Jazz | Ambient | Noise |

Masayoshi Urabe is a well-known japanese master of avant-garde jazz. Specialized on playing abstract alto-saxophone, he has worked together with a lot of other musicians, including the band Kousokuya. Before start the talking about Ware Wa Seidai, I got to point that this is one of the most abstract music I've heard. Urabe is found here playing a big variety of non-standard instruments and standard instruments in a non-standard way. Metal joins, glasses, chains, blades... he uses every kind of unusual material to create a frenetically insane atmosphere. On the first track, you can hear him knocking, throwing, breaking, crashing, hitting, coughing, whistling... the list of sounds found here go on infinitely. On the 4th track, you can hear he performing altogether with lots of field-sounds (cars driving by, the wind, ambulance's sirens, breathing sounds, etc). The music is so abstract that its meaning is almost intangible, besides being weirdly beautiful. When he uses standard instruments, like sax, harmonicas, guitars, he almost always produce a strange combination of non-melodic sounds. With a totally out-of-tune sax, you can barely hear any note, but only his mouth blowing the wind through the metal. The guitars are thrown in and out to produce the most shrieking noise possible, and a casual harmonica can be found, gently chanting some sparse notes. Overall, this music is sparse, with only some noisy moments, and totally confusing. It reminds me well of Keiji Haino's Global Ancient Atmosphere, Keith Rowe's and Roscoe Mitchell's experimentations, which is a good thing. A great album for those willing to explore the skirts of the musical dimension.

Catalog: PSFD-147 (P.S.F. Records)
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