HASEGAWA-SHIZUO - Gene Packs

Debut album by a new improvisation group consisting of Hirotomo Hasegawa and Shizuo Uchida. Both have a leather-bound folder full of underground back-story -- Hasegawa was the lead singer of seminal early eighties Japanese punk/hardcore group Aburadako (Greasy Octopus), while Uchida was a long-term member of Hainos Nijiumu medieval dream-drone unit. The groups instrumentation is highly unorthodox, placing Uchidas mysterious bass textures against the wet skirl of Hasegawas hichiriki, an ancient double-reed wind instrument whose haunting upper register tones are an unmistakable feature of gagaku court music. Hasegawa brings a bucketful of phlegm to his approach to the instrument, out-honking Zorns duckcall work by a marshy mile. Uchida also contributes some striking ichigen (single-string) koto. Deliriously psychedelic, fully immersive drone and oriental wind works in the grand tradition of Taj Mahal Travellers, Nijiumu, Marginal Consort and too few others. - Alan Cummings.