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”

As We Breathe, with nine tracks and about 70 minutes, is the second album out of the six released by the group. Despite the earliness of this and their previous album (their debut Wordless), their concept was already well-defined based on Hashizume’s compositions and musical direction, and the musicians show a cohesive personality with intuitively-linked playing and precise timing.

Over warm tones of electric guitar and fretless bass, the breathy, long notes of the tenor sax push through the air with an ethereal presence. The deep, round anchor of bass is necessary and comforting as active pinpoints of drums and cymbals light up and spark with energy. The sound of electrified strings inhabits the music, submerging and cresting unpredictably with a mesmerizing effect.

Most songs run at about seven to ten minutes, allowing the music to build slowly, confidently, and the musicians to move at their own pace. This is a consistent quality of Hashizume’s wisely crafted music: Things are done subtly but powerfully, melodic qualities change under your feet like shifting sand, and rhythms are often engineered to be atypical but stable. As deep tentacles entwine and pull down, keep in mind, remember as we breathe.

Track #1 “Last Song” is an abstract painting of sound where the saxophone and guitar duet a melody while the bass, drums, and piano paint a dreamy landscape background. Fluid, floating, swirling like liquid and vapor, smoothly merging into abstract shapes. A strong melody statement by the tenor sax pulls the mist and rhythm around in its wake. It lingers in the mind like a recollection of a mysterious dream as smoky drums loosely hypnotize.

#2 “Sakura-Ame” (桜雨, cherry blossom rain) (8:40) is a dark waltz, mysterious and extending the previously established misty feeling. There is some sort of magical tint, a casting of a spiraling spell.

#3 “Sign” is stylish and energetic as jazz drama and rock sensibilities meet. Crisp drums punctuate a simple but memorable theme over progressively intense harmonies and movements.

#4 “Fraise” (French for いちご, strawberry) is tender with the pulse of a rock ballad. The catchy melody plays out with a curiously familiar yet unfamiliar mood, heightened by the slightly offset melodic placements and syncopated offbeats.

The mid-to-uptempo 4/4 jazz/rock #5 “Encore” (9:31) has Orihara’s bass stating the opening and closing theme over piano arpeggios, setting up the dramatic stage for some great improv from the bass and piano (with incredible left-hand/right-hand scene-stealing conversation) before sax and guitar interplay. The drums and bass rhythms really propel things forward with deadly accuracy, as with many of the highlights here.

Track #6 “Keep in Mind” is an exploratory suite-like story, where the slow and poetic opening grows into a lilting song in 3/4 and unwinds midway to a piano solo, free group styling, and ambient sound effects. Here too, again, the feel of scenes set in a Bladerunner world arises with that sci-fi future vibe of neon and grit under the surface.

#7 “Structure” gets the band locked into a 7/4 meter for a suspenseful mood over bass note floors. The electric Fender Rhodes recalls vintage Chick Corea futurism, while the segmented melody (in spacey Jan Garbarek-ish sax with the guitar playing in unison), vibrant chords with subtly morphing tonal qualities, and the moody lower bass riff and drums. The music glides on a cool plane, like surface-skimming spaceships or the Light Cycles of Tron.

#8 “Friends” introduces the album’s prettiest, innocent moments through a tune recited freely, slowly with a subtle meter, playful but quietly yearning.

Finally, #9 “Epilogue” retells the music of #1 “Last Song”, more exploratory, slower, with its unforgettable melody and rich chords moving like clouds in flux through the sky’s invisible currents.

As seen in the track listing, there is an interesting use of self-reference in the song titles. The album starts with track #1 titled “Last Song”, and the last song is track #9 “Epilogue”, which is actually a redone version of “Last Song” (an epilogue, the last song). Also, in the middle of the disc is track #5 “Encore” — a strange place for an encore. Yet if you consider the album as one in-out of a single breath, then the midpoint could be the pause between, marking where the structure folds and loops back to the start (the end), and where it completes the circle to restart the next cycle of breath. (Perhaps a propos, “Cycles” is the title of a track included on both their Wordless and Visible/Invisible releases.)

Audio and Video

• Ryosuke Hashizume Group playing #4 “Fraise” live

• Ryosuke Hashizume Group playing #5 “Encore” live in 2008 (1/2):

• Ryosuke Hashizume Group playing #5 “Encore” live in 2008 (2/2):

• Ryosuke Hashizume Group playing #7 “Structure” live in 2008 (1/3):

• Ryosuke Hashizume Group playing #7 “Structure” live in 2008 (2/3):

• Ryosuke Hashizume Group playing #7 “Structure” live in 2008 (3/3):

• Excerpt from track #3: “Sign”

Links

• Ryosuke Hashizume store

This four-member group consists of Ichino on guitar and baritone guitar, Kenta Tsugami on alto saxophone, Minyen Hsieh on tenor saxophone, and Akira Sotoyama on drums. As this quartet has no bass player, they form a subtly floating, bass-less group sound. Yet Ichino’s guitar work fills up the space nicely, especially when he subs in baritone guitar. All of the songs on Melodies were written by Ichino, and the album was recorded at a live performance at Velvet Sun in Tokyo on June 24, 2024.

The eight songs on Melodies share a front-to-back sonorous quality built on Ichino’s signature electric guitar sound. It’s warm, mellow, and suffused with undistracting effects with a warble that is more felt than heard. It’s a very effective tone that, combined with Ichino’s melodious presence, works so well with the type of songwriting he produces.

With guitar and drums proving the framework for the music, out front, the two saxes split and coil, fork and unite, like tendrils rising from harmonies and rhythms. Much of the time, Ichino’s chordal movements and arpeggiated riffs set the scene, and his rhythm section partner Akira Sotoyama provides an incredibly interesting mix of solid rhythmic reinforcement and off-the-grid ornamentation on drums. Sotoyama leaves the strongest time pulses and placement to the guitarist, knowing when to reinforce Ichino’s pulse by joining in with accents, and when to let go and contrast with the guitar framework with a bass drum thud, a splash of cymbal, or a stagger on a tom drum and anything else within striking distance. The calm seas of guitar and frisson of drums combine, swelling and swaying like waves in a meditative rhythmic dance. Then, the two saxes dip and jump in acrobatic orientation, one moment together and another apart, twining and alive on the written melodies and individual improvisations.

A brief overview of the album flow: Opening track #1 “Conversation and Confession” is dreamy, ambient and catchy. #2 “First Dance” is a solid pretty waltz. #3 “Peace” is rumbling free group improv with rising tension leading to a great Ornette-style group statement at the end. #4 “Elephant Ride” is serious, exploratory and moody, an album highlight.

Track #5 “Spring” has the muted hopefulness of a timid flower blossoming slowly, wide-open and bright. #6 “Solid/Liquid” is another highlight with repeated chordal statements and cycles that transform into reversed echoes, sci-fi signals, and an ascending melodic liftoff. #7 “Tiny Little Waltz” is all flexible, hummable, dreamlike blurs and innocent smiles. Finally, the cute melodies repeated in #8 “Nice People” are a cheerful farewell, moderated, patient, and kind.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video with an excerpt from “Solid/Liquid”, track #6 on this album:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Conversation and Confession”

Links

• Album information

• Motohiko Ichino store link for this album

• Streaming services for this album

In particular, guitarist Motohiko Ichino and fretless electric bassist Ryoji Orihara have been a constant and large part of the sound of the group. They are brilliant electric partners to Hashizume’s breathy and sawtoothed acoustic sax sound (Hashizume also dips into electricity a bit when playing his sax as cycles and drones looped through a device, occasionally).

With his other main live and recording partners pianist Koichi Sato and drummer Manabu Hashimoto (and some other members along the way), the group has developed the alternately freely abstract and grooving sound that has explored, finessed, and breathed life into his music over many years.

That flexible and imaginative sound is made up of subtly serrated edges of saxophone, digitized guitar tones like signals from outer space, tender piano touches and finessed melodic fragments, fluffy mists and lightning of drumset accents, and thick currents of low bass notes. The sound is both shapeshifting and solid.

This is applied to Hashizume’s compositional ideas of ethereal lushness, with all of its colorful layers of sound, transforming tonalities, nuanced time and meter misdirection, and dramatic development and suspense. These compositional ideas, together with the group’s sound and individual mastery, are the novel recipes that are interpreted through the musicians’ steady cooking for inspired, enjoyable results.

This 2014 album, Side Two, is his second-most recent album and was released a few years before his latest album Incomplete Voices from 2017. Yet, as a marker on Hashizume’s album release timeline, Side Two has an even stronger connection to the two prior albums released just before Side Two, those being his albums Visible/Invisible (2013) and Acoustic Fluid (2012). In a way, Side Two could be considered a combination of live extras and alternate versions of songs from those two prior albums and recording sessions.

With a 44-minute runtime, Side Two contains just four tracks (Hashizume’s original compositions, as with all his albums). The songs were all recorded live during the same performances, and with the same members, as the songs on Visible/Invisible. This fact can give meaning to the title Side Two when interpreting this album as a continuation of the previously released live album.

But, additionally, three of the songs on Side Two were also featured on Hashizume’s 2012 studio album Acoustic Fluid, although here with longer run times:

1. Conversations with Moore (Side Two: 13:48 / Acoustic Fluid: 8:04)

2. The Color of Silence (Side Two: 10:49 / Acoustic Fluid: 4:20)

3. Slumber (Side Two: 13:44 / Acoustic Fluid: 7:50)

4. Duet (Side Two: 5:12 / not on Acoustic Fluid)

The album opens on solid ground with light rhythms and a short repeated piano motif. Otherworldly melodies float around faded guitars, scratchy brushes, and shimmering cymbals with a feeling of curiosity and eeriness. The next song is more abstract with a loose time feel. Long notes flow freely with tones of cautious storytelling. Suspenseful drama builds, rising and falling through the controlled touch of all five musicians acting as one. Track three builds slowly towards energetic excitement through longer melodies played in unison over echoey guitar arpeggios, repeated vamps, interesting time signature changes, breaks, and shifting structures. Finally, encore-like, the album wraps up with five minutes of the mellow and uplifting sounds of a swaying waltz with old-world charm and plenty of captivating sax, piano, and group improvisation and interplay.

All this together makes 2014’s Side Two a delight especially for diehard fans, as it becomes both an extension of the 2013 live album and of the 2012 studio album with three of the songs in alternate extended versions. These extended versions get more time to breathe with more life and patient development. For the listeners, more time to absorb and dwell in these aural environments. And for the musicians who recorded this live and in the moment, no doubt more time to enjoy the freedom to give and receive inspiration from each other, from the performance setting, and from the live audience who was silently tuned in and becoming part of the experience.

Liner Notes

(Translated from an excerpt of Nozomi Hirano’s and Mitsutaka Nagira’s original Japanese liner notes.)

…

This album, Side Two, was recorded during the same sessions as Visible/Invisible, but the colors of the songs are clearly distinct. Considering that Visible/Invisible could be considered relatively “visible” with many songs having visible (easy to catch) rhythms, this album Side Two could be called “invisible” with a close-up on unseen elements. Many of the songs here do not have simple time senses, but that’s not to say that they are completely devoid of rhythm like ambient or drone, for instance. The rhythm is always there as it surfaces to places where it can be seen, to submerge again, and to repeat.

…

If I recall correctly, I was able to chat with [Ryosuke] Hashizume a little bit at the bar when I went to his performance at No Trunks in Kunitachi. Putting aside the fact that I had already been drinking, we had a pretty serious discussion about music in this short interval. It left quite an impression on me so I thought I’d indulgently write that about here. My recollection is vague but the substance of the conversation was along these lines.

“It’s hard to generalize but I think that New York musicians play notes that match their jazz bars, that environment, and the atmosphere of New York. It’s the same for Nordic musicians. The sound of New York musicians may be loud, or Nordic musicians may use space in a relaxed manner when performing… it’s a question of how they adapt to the place and atmosphere. Similarly, I want to put out sounds that match Japan’s places and atmospheres, and I want to perform with a volume, tone, and phrasing that matches the location and the scale of the venue on that day.”

I don’t remember how we ended up talking about this, but I have the feeling that these words are an apt description for the music of Ryosuke Hashizume. That is to say, they describe the Ryosuke Hashizume Group.

I’ve also met [Motohiko] Ichino a few times, and I interviewed him once, when he said the following.

“Wherever I go, I don’t find it that interesting to go to the place with a feeling like ‘/this is my sound/.’ It’s more interesting to arrive with nothing in store, get some kind of inspiration, and then use my skills to add something to it to make it music. As instrument characteristics go, the guitar is an accompaniment instrument, isn’t it? That may play a big part. My way of making music is the same as having a conversation. If something is brought up, say, for instance, manga, I’ll try to talk about manga to the extent that I can. I’m always unarmed, you know.”

Although my conversations with these two musicians were different, I felt that they had something in common. Apart from having a similar tension somehow, there was a commonality in gravitating to harmonize with each distinct environment rather than putting themselves out in front. Listening to the Ryosuke Hashizume Group with these conversations in mind, I could understand a lot more.

Ichino continued, “Basically in jazz, it’s common to find players taking turns, telling life stories with a bang and then giving way, then the next player tells a story, bang, and gives way… I’m not very interested in that.” This conversation that I had with Ichino was probably about the same ideas.

By the way, for me, listening to this album is excellent for chilling out. So are Acoustic Fluid and Visible/Invisible.

None of the songs make use of the “modern jazz cliché” of cycling through solos. A beautiful melody starts and flows smoothly into a performance where the melody and improvisation surge in and become hard to distinguish, continually swaying before subtly reaching the ending. Each performance overlaps and intersects, blurs together, and continues in a relaxed way that makes you lose track of time. You can tell that the music is played with a high degree of concentration. But there’s no excessive tension in the notes or the spaces between the notes. Although there are moments of gradual acceleration, crescendos, or natural deceleration, there is never a time where dynamics are used inappropriately or to catch listeners off guard. If anything, you can only hear a performance where the notes overlap seamlessly and transition smoothly, without being aware of note groupings and pauses.

Also, the sound of each instrument rings with a tone and texture that seems to have been chosen for the sound to be heard here. This is also a reason why I began to like listening to this for chilling out. The tones are chosen for the overall sound more than for their own individual sounds. Manabu Hashimoto’s dry percussion sounds harmonize with Ryoji Orihara’s thick fretless bass. The reason for having a fretless bass rather than an upright bass is quietly but eloquently heard. I don’t know of any other jazz like this. And, along with Hashizume’s sax, Ichino’s guitar, and Koichi Sato’s piano, everyone plays just the right number of notes and volume for the tone and texture here, without addition or subtraction. The perfectly balanced and smooth sound is built through the improvisation. This gentle thrill is the joy I feel when listening to jazz with the stimulating tranquility of everything in harmony. Considering New York jazz descended from West Coast and cool jazz, or the soundscapes of ECM and Hubro, or the Americana lineage related to Bill Frisell and Brian Blade, this is a different soundscape from all of those.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Audio for Ryosuke Hashizume Group’s “The Last Day of Summer”

• Excerpt from track #3: “Slumber”

The concept is made clearer in the titles of the two discs, Disc 1 “Water” and Disc 2 “Breath”. The two titles perhaps symbolize the transition from womb to world, and describe the sounds of each side. The first disc has Sato playing fourteen of his songs on solo piano, and the second finds Sato playing with small ensembles on twelve tracks, with some of his songs rearranged and repeated between the two discs.

Apart from his jazz and piano work, Sato has recently been involved in movie music, and this seems to influence the personality of this album’s music: evocative and descriptive, beautifully moving and played with finesse.

The first “Water” side features Sato alone on a richly-sounding piano, a Bösendorfer tuned in Vallotti temperament for a subtly changing sound character which is said to produce expressive feelings that can produce different effects for different chords and keys on the piano. Ever thoughtful, no doubt Sato considered and experimented with the harmonics and resonances unique to this particular tuning to enhance his music.

His solo piano is delicate and dramatic on disc 1, and most songs on this side fall in the 2-4 minute range. Some pieces sound like sketches of emotional moods, and others are expertly and cinematically developed, with melodies and constructions with that ideal quality of being perfect musical ideas that were just waiting in nature to be discovered and performed, to be made apparent by an artist.

Like statues from blocks of marble, the shapes emerge as if they were latent forms, waiting for a natural genius to expose them. Sato pulls his shapes out as formed tunes that are sublime, and unlike stone, soft, warm, and gentle, or dramatic, melancholic, and suspenseful. They are tunes that may seem preexisting or obvious later, when looking back, but only after the composer discovered them, wrote them down, performed them.

The ensembles on the “Breath” side also feature Sato’s compositions and piano, adding in variations of subsets of a jazz quartet (piano, guitar, bass, and drums) and subsets of a string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello). Disc 2 songs are generally longer and in the 4-6 minute range.

After Sato, long-time collaborator and guitarist Motohiko Ichino has the most playing time, joining Sato for a majority of the twelve songs. The other instruments (bass, drums, cello, two violins, and viola) weave in and out on different tracks in combinations of duos, trios, quartets, quintets, and octets. One suspenseful song, #4 “Draw” also includes an ambient soundscape musician, who colors the music with water and rain sounds for added tense imagery.

The comfortably pleasing audio quality for Embryo features a slightly muted sound evoking a dark, spacious chamber. The recording is mono, which can be easily assumed to be part of the conceptual environment that the album constructs.

Yet, this non-stereo choice is a decided characteristic of this album’s record label Nagalu. This label was founded by drummer Shinya Fukumori, who also plays on this album and has had monaural hearing since birth. The sound is pristine and connects with the transcendent music for a direct effect.

While some tracks (8) are rearranged and repeated on the two discs, group formations and performances differ (as do the physical pianos and their tuning systems), but so does the track sequencing order.

For example, two of the album highlights, the folksy nostalgic “Hua” and hopefully uplifting “May Song”, are played on both discs, but in reverse order: On disc 1, Sato plays #10 “May Song” followed by #11 “Hua”.

On disc 2, a guitar/piano/bass/drums quartet plays #11 “Hua” followed by #12 “May Song” with a piano/cello duo, the final track that tenderly ascends to high peaks for both this side and the double album itself. This choice is a great one, emphasizing the care and thought put into the music and overall direction.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album featuring “Aqua”, track #2 (disk 2):

• Live ensemble version of “Draw”, track #4 (disc 2), at Nagalu Festival 2021:

• Excerpt from track #10: “May Song”

Links

• More info and audio samples

Ichino’s guitar is in the spotlight, naturally, as this is a guitarist’s album featuring his original compositions. As a guitar trio with acoustic bass and drums, Ichino takes up most of the melodic and harmonic duties as he spins the chord structures, theme statements, and most of the solo improvisation over the precise drum and bass structures.

Ichino’s jazz guitar tone is another big part of the sound of this album. His softly electric sound is treated with subdued effects to surround the tones with comfortable waves of warble and warp and ever so slight overdrive grit. It balances his fluid playing well as he rings out plush chords and improvises, painting notes like light suspended in the vaults of churches, tinted and echoey.

Together, the trio creates music that is on different tracks patiently gentle, relentlessly driving, hypnotically oscillating, wandering and dreamy, and joyfully syncopated. With creative time signatures like three, four, five, and seven, and pulses of straight-eights, soft brushed jazz, and light rock, a great time feel continues throughout the album with ample variety.

Among the ten trio tracks are three songs and one short jam where saxophonist Taiichi Kamimura joins the trio with a bright and edgy horn sound that, like Jan Garbarek’s, balances so well with the richly resonant trio for some of the album’s most stimulating highlights.

Obi Notes

Memories of scenes from the mind’s eye. Ten sketches of sound.

Motohiko Ichino was born in Kobe. He studied at Berklee College of Music under Mick Goodrick (guitar) and others. He is a winner of the Gibson Jazz Guitar Contest in 2003. He currently plays in trios, quartets, solo improvisation, ELECTRON-4 project, and others at shows with a base at Shinjuku Pit Inn. He is also a member of groups including the Ryosuke Hashizume (tenor sax) Group and the Taiichi Kamimura (tenor sax) Quartet.

Audio and Video

• Audio for “Tony”, track #2 on this album:

• Audio for “Sketch”, track #10 on this album:

• A live version of “Childhood”, track #5 on this album:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Wrapped Up”

This first meeting of the pair demonstrates not only their guitar playing but also their liberal use of electric effects, adding modulated buzzes, textures, echoes, and filters to their mellow yet edgy musical tones. These guitar effects add a lot of personality to the music, setting up atmospheres that evolve from playful and curious to dark and intimidating.

#1 “Frozen Dust”:

The first track is relatively long at about thirty-seven minutes, and while it seems to be spontaneously improvised, there are some phase changes as the two players create, move through, and respond to the music.

“Frozen Dust” can be divided into three subtly distinct sections, not rigidly set but impressionistically discernable. There are even subparts within these three sections as flights of fancy, temporary ideas, and shifts of focus morph and adjust in the dialogue of the pair.

The first roughly ten-minute section is like an introduction phase. It is an initial conversation between two entities who offer musical ideas back and forth and begin to play with each other, intertwining and sounding each other out. It’s as if they are establishing contact and making judgments on whether the encounter will be friendly or hostile, and how to move forward from there. In this phase, the mood is playful and jumpy and begins to settle into a story.

The next ten minutes or so incorporate more guitar effects. Echoes and reverse echoes, volume swells, delays, loops, modulation, and other sonic effects begin to create a spookier part of the journey. The music at times dips into a science fiction ambience as the warm guitar tones interact with retro-futuristic sounds. The mood is chaotic and suspenseful as the organic sounds battle with the digital, with the digital forces extending toward the horizon.

The third phase starts at about twenty-two minutes. A single low note is struck and repeats like a bell, over which five dark chords slowly descend and establish a motif that is somber and ominous. The guitar effects here are less up-front but work excellently to produce textured guitar tones that warble with the feel of tarnished antiques and ghosts. The result is like listening to slightly warped vinyl that is vintage and almost worn out, but all the more precious for that.

It is in this third, fourteen-minute section that the two players seem to settle into more conventional roles of rhythm player and improvising soloist. The slowly repeating pedal tone anchors each player to a tonic foundation as they freely yet cooperatively explore the shadowy territory.

Still, even here, their haunting improvisations are combined with music that is full of unrelentingly tense drone notes, anguished guitar wails and moans fading in and out, and resurfacing of the electronic beeps, swells, and modulation from the pair’s tempered use of effects.

#2 “Water’s Edge”:

Compared to the first track, #2 “Water’s Edge” is short and sweet at about nine minutes and continues in the mode of free-ish jazz rooted in cooperation with one guitar’s comping and one improvising. This song also seems to have a written-out final chord-and-melody statement, played freely, whose skeletal structure is filled out with the aural blooms and arcs that the composition allows for.

Finally here, at the end of the album, the music ends and the audience begins clapping, the musicians are introduced, and the listener is reminded of the captivating live creation that this recording captures.

From the promotional material:

Like ice pieces flying in the air, the sounds that are not allowed to stay. An improvisational tapestry swaying between stillness and motion, spun by two guitarists with their own worldview. Unedited full direct recording of the first set of the first duo live at Yokohama Kanmachii 63.

As a final, perhaps trivial, note, there is a brief out-of-place moment near the end of “Frozen Dust” when somebody’s sneeze is audibly captured on the recording, forever embedded in the music for one second. This happy accident brings into focus the in-the-moment musical creation, as well as the intimate music venue where musicians and listeners gather closely to create and appreciate… not to mention adding a humorous momentary dimension to the title of the song itself.

Audio and Video

• Takumi Seino and Motohiko Ichino playing live at Kanmachi 63 from 2012:

• Takumi Seino and Motohiko Ichino playing “雨の夢” (Ame No Yume, Rain Dream) live at Kanmachi 63 from 2011:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Frozen Dust”

Along with Azuma and Nishiyama are the same members as before, guitarist Motohiko Ichino, saxophonist Ryosuke Hashizume, and bassist Toru Nishijima. On the tracks, the five musicians play in different combinations including a duo, trios, quartets, and the full quintet for subtle variations in sound, structure, and solo space.

The music itself, soft and brilliant, is naturally rooted in Nishiyama’s emotive piano and Azuma’s heavenly voice that at times drapes the music like an embroidered cloth, simple, plush, and cozy, and at other times meshes with the piano and guitar as a dimensional, instrumental voice. The addition of Ichino’s mellow guitar and Hashizume’s textured explorations expertly add the warm, astral strands to Nishiyama’s frames and Nishijima’s bass foundations.

Much of the album moves at a slow or mid-tempo pace, a comfortable environment easy to absorb and get lost in. Whisper-sweet, encompassing feelings of dreamy reflection are buffeted by several slightly more upbeat and rhythmic selections, with an overall album ebb and flow that is reassuringly relaxed.

Liner Notes

(Translated from excerpts of Kaoru Azuma’s and Hitomi Nishiyama’s original Japanese liner notes.)

FACES of “East” (東, Azuma) “West” (西, Nishi)

Our first album together was Travels, seven years ago. Compared to that, the songs recorded this time may not be as flashy, but require more precision and delicacy, and the sense of drama I felt was missing previously, but this time I wrote lyrics with the premise of singing as the feeling of the main character.

For my writing style this time, I wanted to capture the ups and downs of visualizing emotions, especially on “Pierre Without a Face” and “Pescadores”. “Pierre” is set in France. It’s my first attempt at substituting French in the lyrics and has a feeling of a dramatic play, and I hope people enjoy my short enactment and introduction at live shows.

“Pescadores” has the feeling of life’s meaninglessness and despair, but after the solos, the musicians together resolve to fill the main character with the decision to live, take it easy but stand firm, so I sang this while moving through these feelings. That posture is just like an Enka singer (haha).

* The composer [Nishiyama] had said earlier that it is like an Enka song.

(Kaoru Azuma)

1. Face of Yesterday

Included on the duo album El Cant Dels Ocells (2012) with bassist Daiki Yasukagawa. This was originally written with a vocal impression, so I asked to have lyrics added to it.

2. White Cloud Mountain Minnow

Also from El Cant Dels Ocells. The title is the English name of the akahire. fish. There is a small aquarium next to the piano in my home piano room and this song was written when young akahire were hatched there.

3. Pierre Without A Face

The first song recorded for this album. At home, there’s a wooden doll with the name of Pierre, but he doesn’t have a face. Be sure to listen to Azuma’s introduction of this song at a live performance.

4. Fly Me To The Moon

Like with our previous album, I wanted to include one standard song. Upon hearing Azuma singing a standard, her grounding power is immediately understood, and I wanted to clearly show how this album and originals are an extension of that.

5. Manouche

I wanted to write a song in the Manouche style, but this song ended up going in a completely different direction. I arranged it with two voices to blend the voice and guitar.

6. Analemma

This is a song included on Shift (2014), but this time I definitely wanted to hear it with the saxophone featured, so I thought of an arrangement.

7. T.C.T.S.

Included on Live (2016). I wrote this by rotating through twelve chords in one cycle with a blues size. It feels great to play this with these members who can perform this space-filled piece without overfilling it.

8. J

I had mainly performed this as an instrumental song in a duo with Motohiko Ichino, so I had vocals added to the duo.

9. Pescadores

Included on the duo album with Daiki Yasukagawa Down By The Salley Gardens (2014). It’s a song written by thinking of a simple melody so thoroughly to the point where there was nothing else that could be done.

10. Night

This is based on “Before Night Falls” from Many Seasons (2007), but I changed the size and expanded the image into a different song.

(Hitomi Nishiyama)

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Excerpt from track #8: “J”

Digital and analog sounds swirl and mix through Motohiko Ichino’s guitar, laden with textural effects and deploying modern music and rhythms alongside carefully tuned sound and static in an audiophile’s frame. This is vibe-setting music that wouldn’t be out of place in a fan playlist of lofi study beats or on the edges of a digital-future jazz collection.

The Torch/’s nine songs explore territory that blends digital and analog sound, with effects and filters added to the saxophone and guitar as they play looping patterns over the webs of modulated synths, drums, and bass. Alongside the spacey orbits, as on Rabbitoo’s first album /National Anthem of Unknown Country, there are also comforting echoes of old-fashioned primal humanness inhabiting the frequencies as well.

Listening to this album creates these sorts of impressions: A visual prism broadcasting waves…Monochrome soundtrack music, comfortably robotic/human labwork…Layers of melodic interlace cascading down Escher staircases…Sinister underground synth beat, chewy notes, and floating sound waves…A drifting mix of clouds and snowflakes…Bubbling and frothing uptempo odd-meter club beat…Sliding westward roots to country…Circular spiraling groove a la Medeski Martin & Wood…Slow slices of sound intersecting and reflecting…

Audio and Video

• Promotional video with excerpts from the album:

• Excerpt from track #2: “火のこどもたち (Children Of Fire)”

The music on this album alternates between slow, free sketches and mid-tempo modern jazz. The slower tracks are beautifully patient, somewhat open-ended with room for the group to pulse and grow organically while trekking through the movements.

Whether on the undertow of “Current”, the storytelling of “The Color of Silence”, or the tranquil, soft “Home”, the slower numbers are soundscapes for creating acoustic moods, a vaguely Blade Runner Vangelis-esque setting of future nostalgia. The recorded warmth of the instruments adds to this with a dynamic mix of warbling guitar, artistically nimble drums, fluidly echoey sax, the magnetic attraction of fretless electric bass, and full, graceful piano.

Among the slower songs, the mid-tempo songs are latched to frames in motion through riffs, loops, or steady rhythms on which longer themes develop. Songs like “Last Moon Nearly Full”, “Conversations with Moore”, and “The Last Day of Summer” thrill with emotional, shapeshifting suspense through the peaks and valleys of the compositions layered with individual improvisation. Throughout, the album is a chimera of imagination, a satisfying journey from the initial pull of the opening “Current” to the last welcome of “Home”.

Audio and Video

• Live performance of “Last Moon Nearly Full”, track #2 on this album:

• Live performance of “The Last Day of Summer”, track #4 on this album:

• Excerpt from track #3: “Conversations with Moore”

Through his modern music, with a clean recording sound and deep reverb, the style of ECM and similar European jazz music is brought to mind. Hashizume’s group for this album is a quartet built on sax, electric guitar, fretless electric bass, and drums, and creates a sound that is both organic and electric, sleekly modern. Hashizume also uses effects to loop his sax on a few tracks, heightening the otherworldly effect on portions of the album.

With a length of 72 minutes spread out over ten tracks, the songs breathe and bloom with energy, pushing towards fusion jazz through graceful melodies riding over sharp beats and beguiling frameworks. Song titles include “Face”, “Seven Four”, and “Cycles”, where the music ranges from cool with futuristic floating qualities to sparse, freeish poems and mysterious, rocking adventures, each song offering up a thematic musical drama, thoughtfully constructed and stylishly executed.

Audio and Video

• Ryosuke Hashizume Group performing live in 2016:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Face”

The five-piece group led by guitarist and primary songwriter Motohiko Ichino produces otherworldly atmospheres with loops of sound and cascading sheets of melody set against precise rock and dance-inspired beats. The instruments riff and interlace, fitting together like puzzle pieces at times, an intense chorus at others, while swirling over underlying rhythmic grids for a dusky, spacey, trance-like aura.

Definitely not following the typical jazz formula, this beat-centered music with some live jazz improvisation incorporates electronic loops and samples in real-time along with their primary instruments – guitar, sax, keyboards, bass, and drums – modified with echoes, distortion, and other effects. Another clever addition, the Minimoog synthesizer’s characteristic sounds enrich the music greatly with a haunting, retro-futuristic feel, evoking popular songs and suspense movies from the past and strengthening the sensation of this dramatic, mood-pushing music.

Audio and Video

• Video for “Monkey’s Dream”, track #1 on this album:

• Video for “Eat Your Orange”, track #7 on this album:

• Video for “The Third Sun”, track #11 on this album:

• Excerpt from track #6: “subliminal sublimation”

Through sounds ranging from ethereal and delicate to deep and groovy, the music steadily develops in dramatic style, patiently, with nooks and crannies of musical texture creating a fulfilling, lush experience. This is art music, creative jazz with rock, modern classical, and free elements, carefully crafted with space for the skilled musicians to stretch out together, painting fantastic and vivid colors with harmonic richness and rhythmic dynamicism.

With six songs ranging from eight to 16 minutes each, the music breathes with life: From the opener “Journey”, flowing like water over a delicate lattice of cymbals and drums, moving into “The Last Day of Summer”, a mysterious melody storytelling over a jazz/rock fusion riff, contrasted against the sound effects of “15 Night”, a darker poem-like atmosphere, floating with the stimulating “Cycles” and settling into “Park”, an anthemic, never-want-it-to-end pop/rock jazz tune, before reemerging from dreams with the final song “Sketch #1”, each composition offers a fascinating path through the seen and unseen facets of this compelling music.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Excerpt from track #4: “Cycles”

Sato conceived the main theme while traveling in Norway and viewing a certain painting. The work of art, Art Rolfsen’s “The Big Station”, graces the cover and inspired “The Railway Station”, a four-part suite arranged over four tracks. This music emerges and recedes through tracks #1, 6, 9, and 12, resulting in four distinct songs with common echoes.

From this setting and throughout the rest of the album, beautiful music blossoms and inspires scenes of travel. Dramatic compositions with full, earthy sounds create moods spanning excitement, relaxation, hectic impressionism, and, naturally, melancholy. This music embraces emotions that may arise at different times during a long journey, a soundtrack to a trip, a modern work of art.

Audio and Video

• Audio samples from the CD:

• Excerpt from track #1: “The Railway Station”

The music is sleek, organic, and hypnotic at times. For example, track #3 “Synesthesia” is particularly magical as time and pulse slip and shift as the music develops; at other times, the group locks into a detailed groove, or opens up the framework and allows timekeeping to fade from the audio palette. The roomy improvisational passages are filled with emotional passion and rooted by the quintet’s empathy established through years of live and recording experience.

High-caliber musicianship and exquisite songcraft make this an absorbingly satisfying listen, cerebral yet bodily grooving.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video with clips from the album:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Still”