From the Abolition Port
Kuwayama Kiyoharu & Masayoshi Urabe
$12.99
A gripping, devastatingly patient, and emotionally raw improvisation for cello, saxophone, and metal chains recorded live at Kuwayama Kiyoharu‘s cavernous warehouse space in Nagoya, Japan in March 2002. Rather than an event-driven, linear performance, From the Abolition Port is a single structure, with the ghostly presence of the space acting as either a third performer, or perhaps as the composer. The music is violent in its sparseness; sharp instrumental outbursts push with great effort against a backdrop of blackness as dense and heavy as the sun. From the Abolition Port suggests a private ritual, or a seance… or perhaps absurd theater, with unseen players circumnavigating a pitch-dark industrial space, sending out desperate distress signals and futilely listening for a response.
Alto sax player Masayoshi Urabe is known for his solo performances, but has worked alongside fellow psych/noise travellers Kosoukuya, Junko, Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro, CCCC), Kan Mikami, and Chie Mukai. Kiyoharu Kuwayama played cello in the duo Kuwayama-Kijima, but his primary project is the Catastrophe Point series, which he records under the name Lethe.
(note: this album was recorded on October 2, 2003, not October 3, 2002 as is printed in the insert)
Kuwayama Kiyoharu & Masayoshi Urabe – From the Abolition Port (excerpt) by Intransitive Recordings
Praise for From the Abolition Port:
“You’re unlikely to hear any room-style recording that captures the room itself in such detail. So much so, in fact, that it’s as if the space is an equal partner in the improvisation. Recorded in a port warehouse, it actually sounds like Urabe and Kuwayama are in different rooms, a fact reflected in their playing. There’s not dialogue here so much as co-existence, each player in their own world yet unified by the common space. The effect is fragile yet momentous, every gesture magnified, truly free and unconnected to the last. I doubt there’s any electronic manipulation, but the space is enough: reverb, distortion and dynamic shifts come seemingly at random, and the various bits of metal, junk and percussion both players use expand the sound as they reveal the space.” – Paris Transatlantic
“Kuwayama & Urabe only recorded a single piece of 49 minutes for this disc, but what room! Space is so vast, cold, industrial, and disturbing, but all this is balanced by the warmth, emotional intensity and therefore the humanity of the musicians who do not shrink from some form of lyricism. In the place chosen by Kuwayama, every sound flies, affects suddenly and violently to finally follow his path and free air. The echo is breathtaking and provides all the body space that empowers the sound. I rarely heard a place have as much presence and consistency, all sounds are made spectral and ghostly as they immerse themselves in this space… a work rather tinged with a poignant lyricism and sensitivity, wrenching, full of emotions rich and intense, exacerbated by the acoustics. (From the Abolition Port is) certainly one of the most captivating records and most sensitive that I’ve heard recently, one of the most singular and remarkable. I can not state enough that this is a true masterpiece of emotions and sonorities, a magical beauty and uncommon. A big thank you to these two artists for this musical pearl!” – Improv-Sphere
