*2023 stock* "Ask most open-eared listeners about Japanese music since the 1960s, and they’ll likely talk about the psych and noise scene, the offshoots of Onkyo music movement or maybe the richly documented electronic music documented by Omega Point on their Obscure Tape Music of Japan series. The free jazz scene in Japan and neighboring countries has been a bit harder to pin down. PSF nailed the voluminous output by Masayuki Takayanagi and Kaoru Abe and labels like Trio, Japanese Denon and Paddle Wheel put out some great collaborations by musicians like Masahiko Togashi and Masahiko Satoh. But with the release of two new recordings, the Lithuanian NoBusiness label, has launched a new imprint in collaboration with the Japanese Chap-Chap Records to document unreleased concerts that took place in Japan in the 1990s, organized to capture cooperative projects by visiting American-European musicians and seminal Asian players. And with this duo between trombonist Paul Rutherford and drummer Sabu Toyozumi, they have kicked things off in a spectacular manner.

Toyozumi was one of the first generation of Japanese free improvisers, along with Masayuki Takayanagi and Kaoru Abe, starting in the late 1960s. As a member of Takayanagi’s New Directions, he was instrumental in their scorching torrential sound. His duos with Abe are also well worth searching out. Toyozumi became the only non-American member of the AACM in 1971 (appearing on Anthony Braxton’s Creative Music Orchestra album recorded in Paris that year), and helped foster a fertile scene in Japan while collaborating with visiting musicians like Rutherford, Peter Brotzmann, Wadada Leo Smith, John Russell, Derek Bailey and others. The drummer was a central participant in a series in the 1990s put on at Café Jumbo in the small Japanese town of Tokoname where this live recording was captured.

Rutherford, of course, was a seminal member of the free improvisation scene in London. His solos, recordings with the various incarnations of the group Iskra, and membership in Globe Unity Orchestra, London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra and countless ad hoc groupings put him in the forefront of the development of advanced approaches to his instrument. Rutherford’s only other duo encounter with a drummer that seems to be a meeting with Paul Lovens but this setting is a natural for him.

Toyozumi and Rutherford prove to be superb partners for each other. Over the course of five expansive improvisations which buck and bridle with exuberant energy, there is a constant volley of ideas between the two. Thundering duos break open for solo excursions which effortlessly spiral their way back together. The trombonist’s fluid flurries and burred multiphonics dart and dive across his partner’s barrages with an unfettered ebullience. Toyozumi’s open sense of flow, pinpoint attack, keen ear toward texture and color and deep listening is evident throughout. Moving from chattering textures to cymbal spatter to full on thunder, his sense of timing and densities of activity are always in perfect synch with his partner. It is easy for these types of ad hoc meetings to shamble and lose focus but that never occurs here. The two dive in, know how to leave space for each other, and know how to wrap things to effective closure. It is great to have this one available and it bodes well for what is to come in the series." - Michael Rosenstein