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High tones are, as the title clearly states, in fashion. Sachiko Mplays them exclusively, TV Pow employ them often, Toshimaru Nakamuraseems to live mostly in the uppermost frequency range, and on and onwith the hordes of late-comers and hangers-on. The sine tone is asobvious and self-explainatory a noise as white static, or 60-cycle hum,or feedback, and as such must be used very intentionally in order to beat all effective. Whatever their relation to each other might be, allperformances on this album use sine tones as a key element. Thankfully,all the muscians are dextrous enough improvisers and sensitive enoughlisteners to create more than a mere demonstration of a trend. AlmaFury (aka Claude Besnard and Vonick Moccoli) seems to be an especiallyexciting duo, whose pieces leap and dive gracefully among gravel growlsand piercing highs. The trio recording covers much territory in its 21minutes, and made me wonder why an entire album was not devoted to thisgroup. When it changed subject to Xavier Charles afterwards, I felt asif I had cold water thrown on me; I was just enjoying the many placesthat this quartet could take me, when suddenly they were gone, thesubject abruptly changed. Not that Charles' solo tracks are bad; theyare not, though the use of recognizable radio fragments has never beento my taste. To me, as soon as an improviser turns on a radio, puresound is brought crashing down to a reference that it cannot recoverfrom; I find myself too aware of the process and attempting to tunethat part out (no pun intended). The Charles/Otomo duo is lesssuccessful than the quartet, if only because they each seem to be doingtheir own thing at the same time, in the same room. I would have likedto hear the possiblilities of their instrumentaion explored in moredepth (could this have been a full duo CD?). The inclusion of twoadditional Charles solo pieces is fine, if (for the reasons alreadydescribed) somewhat puzzling.
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