Tom Soloveitzik, Takashi Masubuchi

Tip! *2024 stock* I first met Takashi in a duo performance by Seijiro Murayama & Tetuzi Akiyama at Permian. I recall that the small underground venue was packed and that the interplay between these two great musicians was vivid, tense and loud. After the performance we scheduled to meet and play at a later date. There’s always some aura (in my mind) when two improvising musicians meet for the first time, as if there is still a chance for an infinite amount of possibilities. It felt natural for me when Takashi played the first note on his guitar; we were listening together to the sound spreading around the room, the silences between the notes and our breath. The first note (of our first meeting) set the tone for others to come, paving a way that is narrower or rather more determined in its possibilities, nevertheless it was a direction that seemed well suited for us. After our first meeting we convened to meet again, this time before a trio performance of both of us with Toshimaru Nakamura at Permian. Second meetings are always more difficult. There’s already a mutual concept of music making and memory. During our recording session Toshimaru appeared in the room suddenly. I felt then, as a newcomer to Tokyo, that I had the privilege to meet different generations of musicians from the improvised scene in Japan.

A couple of months after our meetings at Permian whilst visiting Kobe Modern Art Museum, I stumbled upon a picture by the American artist Charles R. Knight from 1931 titled 'Permian Period', referring to a geological period almost 299 million years ago by the same name. In it, there’s an imaginative human trial to depict something of the dinosaur and its long gone aura. It made me think of several periods, anthropocentric or not, that coincide and continue to proceed backwards and forward at the same time, in places that we inhibit, are present and make sounds.