Makoto Kawabata (listed here as the reverse) is the principal guitarist in
Japanese hard psychedelia (psych-o-delia is more like it)
Acid Mother's Temple, a band with a small but fanatical following who have played the U.S. sporadically and always done decibel damage to the hearing of their listeners. This solo album by
Kawabata is not another exercise in
Japanese power rock, but something else entirely, perhaps from another world. With a background in
folk,
world,
solo guitar improv, and
electronic musics,
Kawabata offers us a solo set of four droning, meditative, improvised recordings using 12 different instruments, including electronics and water -- and no guitars -- to create a kind of improvised dream music. Performed solo on violin, kemenje, zurna, sarangi, taiko, gong, water, bouzouki, cello, vibes, organ, and sitar, these four tracks that encompass the CD's 40 minutes are equal parts delicately floating and heavily droning.
"Shi" is the most notable track, with the bouzouki as its centerpiece, and employing the use of a cello, vibraphone, and organ to create atmospherics and textures with, the track offers a modal melodic frame, and a repetitive inner structure to strike a balance between the material and ethereal worlds using nothing more than tonal sketches to bring out the bouzouki's timbral elegance. Other tunes, such as the 12-minute
"Meii" are freer, less given to repetition and more to oblique strategies involving the textural considerations of water and gongs, as well as old-world Japanese instruments. This is a deeply mysterious and satisfying recording that would not be out of place on the shelf with
Terry Riley,
Tony Conrad,
LaMonte Young, or
John Cale's '60s experiments, nor would it be remiss to say that fans of Japan's other
psych-folk unit,
Ghost, would enjoy this as well. ~ Thom Jurek
![The Best of China & Japan [1996]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0743037136129_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "The Best of China & Japan [1996]")