The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation: Doomjazz Future Corpses!
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The telepathy level was clearly running high on February 24th, 2007 when the incredible live performance captured on Doomjazz Future Corpses! was laid down at Overtoom 301, Amsterdam. The seventy-minute epic finds The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, a new alter-ego of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble that Jason Kohnen (aka Bong-Ra) and Giedon Kiers formed in 2000, giving birth to a slow-burning, low-level drone that's rife with barely-controlled tension. An undercurrent of violence and dread persists throughout, with trombonist Hilary Jeffrey, cellist Nina Hitz, saxophonist Bruce Coats, and guitarist Eelco Bosman, all of them anchored by Kohnen's omnipresent bass throb, working collectively to create an immense mass of doom-laden sludge. Spacey warble that sounds borrowed from a low-budget ‘50s sci-fi film surfaces now and then, presumably generated by Jeffrey's oscillator. Though the recording is split into nine tracks, the piece moves uninterruptedly like a gigantic storm cloud inching across the sky.

The ensemble's music, though free-form in principle, exemplifies a level of carefully modulated chaos that's carefully nurtured until it reaches its climax in part seven when the implosion finally arrives. Alongside the charred corpse of raw guitar chords, Jeffrey's trombone wails like a dying mastodon. Bosman is granted center stage on the final two parts, and makes the most of the opportunity by generating raw, apocalyptic slabs that writhe aggressively without shattering into fragments. What distinguishes the piece most of all is the participants' disciplined approach. Jeffrey, Hitz, and Bosman each contribute memorable individual playing that never spills over into soloing per se. Instead, each keeps the focus firmly on the sonic mass, continually feeding into it in order to keep the behemoth alive and breathing. The group itself succinctly characterizes Doomjazz Future Corpses! as a “soundscape of barren wastelands, droning into memories of future's past.” Yes, the dirge is gloomy, suffocating, and claustrophobic—in a good way.

August 2007