Since the living whole of inimitable beauty that was Totemo Aimasho, Sayo and Takashi Ueno have careened off into a welter of collaborations and gotten a trifle lost in the giddy whirl. Such explorations no doubt netted the duo so many sundry virtues and, at the very least, all but ensured they weren’t simply thrown back onto their own image. But they’ve also served to shatter their inner stylistic coherence, and works such as Tan-Tan Therapy, born of an intermingling with the Swedish group Tape, have largely seen them content to excavate the more emblematic fragments while the other pours their particular brand of cement into any and all nooks and crevices.
So here the duo are with Daisuke Namiki and Takeshi Hiruma of Secai, a work which meets with a result not unlike the duo’s aforementioned double-date with Tape some short while ago. In a sort of goyish craziness, everything is leveled up; and compositions generally express the complementarity and equal value of antithetical styles and themes. The right combination of elements are struck upon and fuse together in a constantly shifting surge every now and again – the queasy blend of muted trumpet, hushed flutes and wayward basslines, along with the rhapsodic looping and gestural fullness of Ueno’s guitar and Sayo’s curling voice, that is found on “Dasbon” is touched with joy and sheer bedlam, while others show just how adept the duo are at integrating with other musicians; engaging in acts of flight and pursuit, stirring the music’s surface while still maintaining a suitable enough environment in which their particular melodic sensibility can still flourish in places.
The real crux of the matter, however, is that, on its own terms, pleasant as it is, the album as a whole is left wanting. Even with its emphasis on all-out participation – the whole world is its material – the work is far from sounding free or fresh; and the combinations themselves are neither surprising nor inspired. The result being an album that can be likened to a snapshot of acquaintances huddled together, an image that finds its rest in being sent down the circuits and absorbed for a moment, rather than a privileged photograph of a loved one, hidden away for safe keeping.
Max Schaefer
