Satoko Fujii/Natsuki Tamura/Ikue Mori: Prickly Pear Cactus

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Natsuki Tamura
Satoko Fujii (p)
Ikue Mori

Label:

Not Two/Libra

February/2021

Media Format:

CD

Catalogue Number:

203-062

RecordDate:

March-July 2020

Satoko Fujii, the respected and prolific Tokyo-born piano original, counts mid-1990s meetings with Paul Bley at the New England Conservatory as the turning point in her late-starting jazz career when she began to discover her own improviser's voice. This trio set with her trumpeter husband Natsuki Tamura and New York-based former No Wave drummer and electronicist Ikue Mori is a lockdown phenomenon, that began with Fujii in Japan uploading soundfiles to Mori of some home-piano improvisations (typical fusions of high-energy clusters, minimalism, percussive eruptions and jazz-derived ideas) to which the latter added electronics and Tamura trumpet effects, with Mori finally editing and mixing the results in consultation with the others. The outcome is an uncannily conversational and integrated set, right from the title track's opening succession of Sputnik bleeps, clashing piano chords, windy trumpet flutters, gong sounds and fleeting visits to a groove. Fujii's quietly rolling developments of a quizzical melody on ‘Sweet Fish’ run into abstract sounds like scraped cymbal rims, swirling electronics, explosive Cecil Taylor-like ascents and an unexpected closing lyricism. Long, hooting sounds populate ‘Empty Factory’, wet-kiss ones mingle with piano clangs in ‘Mountain Stream’, and Tamura's snuffly low tones and Irue's eerily human machine sounds embrace on ‘In The Water’. Prickly Pear Circus isn't exactly dinner jazz, but Fujii nails its expressiveness when she says that as well as a document of music-making, “this is also a record of the friendship between Ikue, Natsuki, and me”.

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