Zoe

2024年8月16日リリース

Personnel:

Makoto Kawashima - Alto Saxophone, Harmonica

Recorded September 16, 2022,GOK Sound, Tokyo

Engineered by Yoshiaki Kondo

DMM cut at Pauler Acoustics, Northeim

Photographs by Funaki Kazuyuki

Design by Rob Carmichael, SEEN

Produced by Peter Kolovos  

© All rights reserved

このアルバムについて

With each release and performance over the last ten years, saxophonist Makoto Kawashima has continued to stake his claim as one of today’s most captivating improvisers. Zoe is Kawashima’s first ever studio album and his second with Black Editions. Recorded at Tokyo’s storied GOK Sound, the album is one of the most beautiful and stark renderings of his voice to date. Over two side long excursions Kawashima’s music springs to existence with striking clarity and power yet remains rooted in the more obscure, spiritual realm from which all of his work seems to originate. Rather than let the studio smooth out the performances, Zoe is direct and unvarnished, the only adornment added being the ghostly, faint pre-echo of the reel to reel.

Kawashima’s elevation of an idiosyncratic solo practice places him squarely within the lineage of iconoclastic Japanese saxophonists such as Kaoru Abe, Tamio Shiraishi and Masayushi Urabe. At the outer bounds of improvised music, Kawashima’s work reveals a fragile spirit, one that gives as much emphasis to silence and minute sounds, perhaps hesitations, as it does to ecstatic bursts of tone and texture. His music is undeniably intimate and vulnerable, eschewing the bravado and bluster that have often become tropes in the world of solo improvisation; Kawashima summons searing melodic lines and heavily textured passages and just as abruptly lets them collapse, vanishing into the ether.

Perhaps more than anything, Kawashima is concerned with erasing the distinction between artist and instrument, the barriers between the internal self and the external world around us. “The alto is the only instrument that becomes part of my body. It’s like a soul that fuses together with my spirit. When I hold the instrument ready to play, something external to me appears behind me.” Kawashima weaves aspects of blues and spiritual music within harshly abstract passages and a harrowing vibrato that echoes Albert Ayler’s spirit. His personal experience and approach affirms these connections “I see spirits all the time. Shadows, phantoms. They appear at the border between your internal world and where the external world affects you. What I want to do is give a certain concrete reality to those things. The essential part of yourself that your internal eyes want to look away from. I try to make that concrete, to give it a melody and let it out.”  

https://www.blackeditionsgroup.com/be-1012-makoto-kawshima-zoe

過去 10 年間のリリースやパフォーマンスを通じて、サックス奏者の川島誠は、今日最も魅力的な即興演奏家の 1 人としての地位を確立し続けています。Zoe は川島にとって初のスタジオ アルバムであり、Black Editions との 2 枚目のアルバムです。東京の名高い GOK Sound で録音されたこのアルバムは、これまでで最も美しく、彼の声をありのままに表現した作品の 1 つです。2 面にわたる長いエクスカーションで、川島の音楽は驚くほどの明瞭さと力強さで生まれますが、彼の作品すべてがその源泉であるように思われる、より曖昧で精神的な領域に根ざしています。スタジオで演奏を滑らかにするのではなく、Zoe は直接的で飾り気のないもので、リール トゥ リールの幽霊のようなかすかなプレエコーだけが加えられた装飾のみです。

川島は、独特のソロ プラクティスを高め、阿部薫、白石民夫、卜部正行などの型破りな日本のサックス奏者の系譜にしっかりと位置づけています。即興音楽の限界を超えた川島の作品は、音色やテクスチャの恍惚とした爆発と同じくらい、沈黙や微細な音、おそらくためらいにも重点を置く脆弱な精神を露呈している。彼の音楽は紛れもなく親密で傷つきやすく、ソロ即興の世界でしばしば比喩となっている勇ましさや大げささを避けている。川島は、焼けつくような旋律線や重厚なテクスチャのパッセージを召喚し、同じように突然それらを崩壊させ、エーテルの中に消え去らせる。

おそらく何よりも、川島はアーティストと楽器の区別、つまり内なる自己と私たちの周りの外界との間の障壁を消し去ることに関心を持っている。「アルトは私の体の一部になる唯一の楽器です。それは私の精神と融合する魂のようなものです。私が楽器を演奏する準備をするとき、私の外にある何かが私の後ろに現れます。」川島は、荒々しく抽象的なパッセージとアルバート・アイラーの精神を反映する悲痛なビブラートの中に、ブルースとスピリチュアル音楽の側面を織り交ぜている。彼の個人的な経験とアプローチは、これらのつながりを裏付けている。「私はいつも霊を目にします。影、幻影。それらは、あなたの内面世界と外界があなたに影響を及ぼす場所の境界に現れます。私がやりたいのは、それらのものに具体的な現実を与えることです。あなたの内面の目が目をそらしたがるあなた自身の本質的な部分。私はそれを具体的なものにし、メロディーを与えて外に出そうとしています。」

With each release and performance over the last ten years, saxophonist Makoto Kawashima has continued to stake his claim as one of today’s most captivating improvisers. Zoe is Kawashima’s first ever studio album and his second with Black Editions. Recorded at Tokyo’s storied GOK Sound, the album is one of the most beautiful and stark renderings of his voice to date. Over two side long excursions Kawashima’s music springs to existence with striking clarity and power yet remains rooted in the more obscure, spiritual realm from which all of his work seems to originate. Rather than let the studio smooth out the performances, Zoe is direct and unvarnished, the only adornment added being the ghostly, faint pre-echo of the reel to reel.

Kawashima’s elevation of an idiosyncratic solo practice places him squarely within the lineage of iconoclastic Japanese saxophonists such as Kaoru Abe, Tamio Shiraishi and Masayushi Urabe. At the outer bounds of improvised music, Kawashima’s work reveals a fragile spirit, one that gives as much emphasis to silence and minute sounds, perhaps hesitations, as it does to ecstatic bursts of tone and texture. His music is undeniably intimate and vulnerable, eschewing the bravado and bluster that have often become tropes in the world of solo improvisation; Kawashima summons searing melodic lines and heavily textured passages and just as abruptly lets them collapse, vanishing into the ether.

Perhaps more than anything, Kawashima is concerned with erasing the distinction between artist and instrument, the barriers between the internal self and the external world around us. “The alto is the only instrument that becomes part of my body. It’s like a soul that fuses together with my spirit. When I hold the instrument ready to play, something external to me appears behind me.” Kawashima weaves aspects of blues and spiritual music within harshly abstract passages and a harrowing vibrato that echoes Albert Ayler’s spirit. His personal experience and approach affirms these connections “I see spirits all the time. Shadows, phantoms. They appear at the border between your internal world and where the external world affects you. What I want to do is give a certain concrete reality to those things. The essential part of yourself that your internal eyes want to look away from. I try to make that concrete, to give it a melody and let it out.”