Such

The Issue at Hand is the work of Such, a trio in which Yoshikazu Iwamoto on shakuhachi meets two members of AMM, John Tilbury on piano and Eddie Prévost on percussion. Over two discs and two and a half hours, free improvisation and the meditative discipline of the shakuhachi find a common, mostly quiet ground. There is little soloing and a shared attention to silence and timbre.

The music was recorded at Gateway Studios in Kingston-upon-Thames on 3 August 1998 by Steve Lowe, the same day Tilbury taped Two Chapters and an Epilogue with Evan Parker. It is continuous, with thirteen index points marked only as paragraphs. In his booklet note the composer Frank Denyer stresses how unlikely the meeting is. Iwamoto's aesthetic is rooted in Japanese Buddhism, Tilbury's in European classical training. Prévost, through responses honed in free improvisation, draws everything into "an indivisible whole". Reviewing it in 1999, the shakuhachi player Philip Gelb found the trio mostly quiet and subtly interlocked, and heard the influence of Feldman by way of Tilbury. He linked Iwamoto's part to his training in honkyoku, the solo repertoire of Zen practice, with its stress on free rhythm and listening. Gelb noted too that the players chose a new name instead of presenting the disc under the AMM banner.

Released by Matchless Recordings as MRCD 38, a double CD with David Ryan's untitled ink drawing on Japanese paper on the cover.