Duh, guys! Why didn’t anyone conceive of this incredible pairing sooner! I mean, American experimental minimalist/free-jazz mainstay Alan Licht and Japanese guitar/violin improv wizard Tetuzi Akiyama are BOTH, let’s face it, the CREAM of the avant-garde experimental folk and jazz CROP. But for whatever reason, their two forces never collided for a proper album-length jam session until NOW? (Someone up there in the “Divinely Ordained Musical Meetups Department” has been slacking off!)
And, okay. By “NOW,” I guess I actually mean November 4, 2014. That’s when Licht (on guitar and electronics) and Akiyama (on guitar) inevitably met up in Tokyo and, along with their pals Oren Ambarchi on guitar and Rob Mazurek on cornet, committed a few jams to tape with the help of Makoto Oshiro. The results were then mixed by Licht and Ted Young at Outer Space in Brooklyn on July 15, 2015. And now, lo and behold, the finished album is finally about to see the light of day on March 18 under the auspicious title of “Licht-Akiyama Trios: Tomorow Outside Tomorrow.” Dang, what a ride! But hey, we’re talking folk/jazz/blues improv here: this shit takes its time.
The finished product, which is available for pre-order on CD and digital, comes courtesy of the good people at Editions Mego; it’s basically split into two ca. 20-minute compositions. The first jam (which features the additional guitarwork of Ambarchi) is called “Blues Deceiver”: a “dank blues” with “dirty, crawling mass[es] of feedback, fluctuating vibrations, garage frequencies, and distant interference.” The second track (featuring Mazurek’s cool-ass cornet palpitations), is the titular “Tomorrow Outside Tomorrow,” which “expands on the workshop blues drone” as it slowly “evolves into an introverted and melancholic exploration of mood, atmosphere, interwoven notes, texture, sound, guitar, and electronics.” You can check out an excerpt from that one down below, which should be enough to tide you over until the record comes out next month. (Besides, after all this time waiting for this ridiculously appropriate meeting-of-the-free-folk-minds, what’s another couple of weeks? Hell, some of these dudes’ improvs have probably stretched on for longer than that!)
Tomorrow Outside Tomorrow tracklisting:
01. Blues Deceiver (20:47)
02. Tomorrow Outside Tomorrow (18:52)