Articles
2015 Top 10s & 20s
Roomful Of Teeth

Albums
0
David Arend
Artificial Intelligence
Nimrod Borenstein
Randal Collier-Ford
Deadbeat
Julien Demoulin
Denki Udon
R. Nathaniel Dett
Dwiki Dharmawan
Yair Etziony
Marina Fages
Francesco Di Fiore
Flowers for Bodysnatchers
From the Mouth of the Sun
Goldmund
Markus Guentner
Momenta Quartet
Music Komite
North Atlantic Explorers
Ontal
Prequel Tapes
Saffronkeira
Slivovitz
Alessandro Stella
Subheim
Swarm Intelligence
Robert Scott Thompson
Triac
Trigg & Gusset
Aino Tytti
Andy Vaz
We Mythical Kings
Sebastian Zangar

Compilations / Mixes / Remixes / Reissues
Dub Phizix
Stacey Pullen
Replicants
A Simple Procedure
Tour De Traum X

EPs / Cassettes / DVDs / Mini-Albums / Singles
Ant'lrd
Big Phone
Great Panoptique Winter
Hydro
Mtwn
Mute Forest
Selaroda
Thee Koukouvaya
Joshua Van Tassel

Denki Udon: In ZdB
Three:four Records

A leader-less trio with a jones for live improvisation, Denki Udon consists of Norberto Lobo (electric guitar, electric bass), Giovanni Di Domenico (Fender rhodes), and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (drums). Their appetite for live playing is well-accounted for on In ZdB, which documents a set the trio played on November 21st, 2014 at the Galeria Zé dos Bois in Lisbon. Each of the three brings background in experimental jazz and free improv to their shared endeavour, with figures such as Arve Henriksen, Jim O'Rourke, Fred Lomberg-Holm, Otomo Yoshihide, and Keiji Haino among those with whom they've played.

Being wholly improvised, it's natural that a certain degree of looseness attends the material, and par for the course, explorative episodes stretch out as the participants feel their way along from moment to moment. Yet there is coherence also, so much so that one guesses some small amount of pre-planning or discussion had to have preceded the performance. Lasting thirty-six minutes, the set lends itself perfectly to a vinyl presentation, with two conjoined tracks presented on each side.

“Saike Zoku” opens with Yamamoto saturating the space with colourful percussive flourishes and Lobo and Di Domenico adding painterly textures of their own. As one would expect, that relatively subdued beginning gradually builds into a considerably more animated and aggressive attack, each player feeding off of the energy and ideas of the others. Side A closes with the three digging into a lumbering, blues-based monstrosity titled “Music For Wet Dreams” before inaugurating the flip with the molten free-form thunder of “Needle Dropping.” If there's a secret weapon here, it's Yamamoto, who stokes continual fire throughout the recording; rarely pausing for breath, the Yamaguchi-born drummer whips up cross-currents of cymbal patterns and percussive detail whilst also laying out a stable yet ever-mutating foundation for his partners to play against (see “The Final Static” as an especially good example).

December 2015