From: Wesley (wesleyhongkong_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 2003-01-14 22:18:26
[Sound :: Lounge] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoundLounge
-------- Original Message --------
Album Review :: Kondo Toshinori/Nerve Tripper
source: The Japan Times
HIGH NOTES
NEW RELEASE
Toshinori Kondo: "Nerve Tripper"
By TOM BOJKO
Among his many accomplishments, trumpeter and electronic music
programmer Toshinori Kondo has won the friendship of the Dalai Llama,
played on Herbie Hancock's influential album "Future Shock" and produced
the World Festival of Sacred Music in Hiroshima.
Kondo, who has spent much of his adult life living in the United
States and Europe, has enjoyed playing and recording with a wide
swath of musicians, including DJ Krush of Japan, saxophonist Peter
Brotzmann of Germany, Italian guitarist Eraldo Bernocchi and American
guitarist Henry Kaisar. Kondo once said, "When a child is born it
screams, and this scream sounds the same all over the world. . . . I
want to find my way back there with my music."
One interpretation of much of Kondo's work, including his new album,
"Nerve Tripper," is that he is continuing the legacy of Miles Davis'
1970s electric music. Like Davis at that time, Kondo favors playing
electric trumpet and revels in tone-stretching devices. Also like Davis,
Kondo surrounds himself with musicians who are interested in both the
malleability of sound and the hypnotic power of steady rhythms.
Recorded in Amsterdam with DJ Sahib, "Nerve Tripper" is alternately
funky, startling and relaxing. At its best the album pulls together
three of Davis' disparate fascinations: funk, psychedelic improvisations
and the plasticity of sound.
The track "Dream Vibrates with Space" feels like a slow-moving
psychedelic river journey. Mellow tribal rhythms emanate from either
bank while voices moan among the trees. Periodically, sonic flares
prepared with digital gunpowder illuminate the night until we mark a
bend in the river and merge with "Attaining the Esoteric Life." The
rhythms coming from shore are sharper in tone now and a bass line thumps
beneath our craft like an angry army of disembodied heartbeats. Sounds
drift and tear through the night, propelled ever onward by the heavy
rhythmic currents of the river, and our ominous, but strangely
enjoyable, exploration continues.
The Japan Times: Jan. 15, 2003
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