For this release, two prominent jazz players from Australia join Kuribayashi and Ichino, yet Kuribayashi is no stranger to international connections. In addition to her frequent concerts in Japan, she’s performed with many non-Japanese musicians for overseas tours and recording sessions, including this album’s guest trumpeter Niran Dasika, who has recorded several of his past albums with Kuribayashi.

Naturally, Kuribayashi’s sense of cross-boundary collaborations in jazz extends to this album as well. Although the musicians span continents, and the title grants images of far-away orbiting bodies resonating grandly, their music here is firmly grounded with a warm hum. It conveys introspection, as if to encourage and reward inward meditation. The atmospheric music, at-times dark and intimate, sets the right mood for pulling true emotions out of the musicians, not to mention the listeners. Even the cover art seems to invite an infinite inward/outward gaze, as four planes narrow to a point bounded by distant clouds where a solitary bird explores the limits.

This jazz trio consists of piano, guitar, and drums (and quartet with trumpet for three songs), so this is a somewhat unconventional jazz combo format in terms of classic combo setups.

The so-named bass-less trio format has no low notes produced by an upright bass player. While, technically, the piano range covers the same low notes as an upright bass, the effect is audibly different. The large double bass instrument is not just visually imposing, but naturally creates its own distinctive thumps, slides, hits, and pulls, and all manner of dynamics that a player’s direct fingers on the strings can pull off, in addition to the occasional bowing and the unique personality and style of the individual playing the instrument.

Some say bass-less trios can open up the sound of the group, in so far as the harmonies can be more ambiguous with a floating feeling in the absence of expansive low bass notes that lock the musical roots in and set the pulse of time. Having no bassist can also influence the rest of the group as they adjust their playing to compensate or experiment with different styles of playing in the sonic space.

On Orbital Resonance, the musicians may be more conscious of their roles and their unique tones playing without a bass net. They interact closely and there is a heightened effect of their unified texture of interlaced sounds. The piano’s tender delicacy and steady riffs, the warmly organic guitar tone, and the drums’ kaleidoscopic shimmering, combine to produce a sound that is mellow but alive. This vibrancy is increased when evocatively whispered trumpet is added, and when those whispers grow to more intense effusion.

An emotional hue colors the album, with colors ranging from ethereal and gentle (#1 “Deep Breath”), soothing as a balm (#2 “Family”), moodily exciting and dramatic (#4 “Tanabata Song”, #6 “Road”, #7 “Green Sprout”), and mournful (#3 “Bittersweet”). There are also bright and positive moments (#5 “Yell”, #8 “Onaji Fune ni Noru” (riding on the same boat)) where hope rises and swells to orbit above the clouds, promising better days ahead.

This late 2025 release and the followup tour dates for Sumire Kuribayashi’s Orbital Resonance also marked a special anniversary for the pianist, as it has been a full decade since her debut album Toys (2014) came out. This CD was released in September 2025, and an LP release of Orbital Resonance is planned to be released in May 2026. More information on this album can be found at Orbital Resonance album/streaming links and the Sumire Kuribayashi Online Shop.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for Orbital Resonance:

• “Tanabata Song” from Orbital Resonance:

• Interview with Sumire Kuribayashi on the RoseLove’s Love Power Podcast about Orbital Resonance, with album excerpts and discussion:

• Excerpt from track #5: “Yell”

Through the album’s eleven tracks and thirty-six minutes, Yoshimoto and Sugawa play free jazz and experimental music that pushes beyond the boundaries of standard jazz. The pair avoids the more easily identifiable trademarks of conventional music and songwriting to chase the free-flowing exchange of spontaneous ideas and sounds with few limits imposed.

The ingredients are Yoshimoto on soprano sax and clarinet, Sugawa on cello and contrabass, and beautiful inspiration. The result is filled with eccentric and atonal aspects: wild flights of notes punctuated with wavering drones, careful twining of improvised melodies, and knife-edge slices of notes forming and dissipating in unsettling conditions.

That said, it’s not an album full of noise or ambient effects (though the Bandcamp page for the album does include the tags ambient and dark ambient, along with jazz, contemporary jazz, and freejazz). Horn notes fly around in unpredictable paths, pouring phrases into the air while low notes percolate, bass notes pop and ring, and bowed strings expose eerie terrains.

To some, free jazz may sound like turbulent chaos, dissonant and abstract. Adventurous listeners (especially those searching for new sounds or a break from the ordinary) may appreciate these trips through unexplored territory. On Oxymoron, it is as if two pioneers are making discoveries through risky experiments that cause tuneful chirps, singing tones, and the evocative plucking, strumming, and bowing of bass string notes.

The songs played on Oxymoron seem to be sketched out with anything from simple outlines and thematic concepts to written-out intros and endings. Listening closely and wondering how much is pre-composed and how much is pure ad-libbing can be part of the experience.

The duo’s risk-taking and randomness increase the thrill of the musical search and the potential for invention. (As an aside, this so-called or apparent randomness is something that must be some part of the challenge of playing free jazz that doesn’t just sound like randomness: the musicians must consciously hurdle over or push back against instincts honed by endless hours of accurate drilling and correct practice that have set certain rules and patterns in concrete, both in the mind and muscle memory… to constantly and attentively resist the pull of falling back to using common scale patterns and licks, home keys, chord progressions, and forms that become unconscious gravitational forces for the experienced jazz musicians who have played through and memorized hundreds of standard tunes.)

Many of the songs on Oxymoron are just a few minutes long in the two- to three-minute range. These are briefly visited ideas that the duo stops, examines, and moves on from like waypoints on the journey as they continue to move forward and explore new ideas.

For ideas that are explored a bit more, the longest tracks on the album include two four-minute songs and one ten-minute song.

Track #3 “Password” slowly raises the temperature with sugary bursts of carbonation like curved melodic strands whipping with barbed ends. Sugawa sits out for a minute before rumbling in with fast nonstop bass lines underneath.

The three-part “Mokume” series (tracks #4, #8, and #10) has a particular impact. Clarinet and bowed cello notes play an almost modern classical piece before intermittently droning against one another. Consonance and dissonance slide around like oil and water shifting in a laboratory dish, flowing and touching but unmerging. Musical tones shift, intersect, tangle, and separate like frictional sounds of gossamer silk, like cricket legs or cobweb threads rubbing together, like bubbles of Brownian motion rising from a cauldron’s brew.

The final ten-minute track #11 “Enpitsu Hiko” finds the duo expanding to a trio as the sax and bass are joined by piccolo trumpet (played by Niran Dasika). Playful mayhem is entertained as the trio balances on a tightrope of unity and disarray. Roaming improvisation leads to unintelligible scrambles of speech and juggling of squeaks, pitches, and volume before ending with a satisfyingly clear, slightly bluesy conclusion.

Audio and Video

• Excerpts from a live performance of Oxymoron Duo in 2021 at Velvet Sun in Tokyo, Japan:

• Album audio on Bandcamp

• Excerpt from track #4: “Mokume #1”