Otomo Yoshihide and Chris Pitsiokos — Uncanny Mirror (Eleatic)
When talking about Otomo Yoshihide, one has to be specific as to whether they’re talking about the rock deconstructionist (as a member of the seminal Japanese avant-rock group Ground Zero), the Onkyo pioneer, the big band leader, or the improviser, amongst many other hats. Over the course of more than 30 years, Yoshihide has occupied a space within the avant-garde that no other musician dwells in. In recent years, however, he has found a more than capable improvising partner in saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos. Pitsiokos has managed to forge new forward-looking directions in spite of the retro-fetishistic tendencies of the free jazz scene, working with luminaries such as Luke Stewart, Wendy Eisenberg and Brandon Seabrook along the way.
Uncanny Mirror, the duo’s second release,features Pitsiokos on saxophone and laptop and Yoshihide on turntables, save for one track where he plays guitar. Yoshihide’s approach to the turntable as a vehicle for improvisation is a story of its own. Turntablists such as Christian Marclay, arguably the forefather of experimental turntable music, often use the instrument as a means of referencing various songs and sounds and taking them out of their original context, sometimes in a humorous manner. Yoshihide’s turntable work on Uncanny Mirror, however, is pure sound. The cracks and skips of the turntable are the instrument. The records used as source material are inscrutable, and knowing what they are seems to be beside the point.
The first track is titled “Original Glitch,” speaking to the fact that Yoshihide has employed technological malfunctions as sound sources long before doing so became an idiom of its own. Yoshihide sounds as though he is shooting sparks and fireworks out of his turntables, and Pitsiokos plays off of the madness. His saxophone style is deep and guttural, but also far more intricate and subtle than the typical Brötzmann worship would allow. Somehow, he sounds as though he is peeling apart his saxophone piece by piece through his playing. This frenetic energy is kept up throughout the duration of the record, pausing only on the sixth track “Lava Flow.” This track is a tense, ominous dirge; Yoshihide’s turntable sounds less like fireworks and more like waves flowing out from the ether, and Pitsiokos substitutes his growl for a slow, but no less aggressive, whining tone. The end result shows that, even after nearly a decade of working together, Yoshihide and Pitsiokos are far from exhausting the possibilities of their improvisational practice.
