This meeting between New York's Phantom Limb and Tokyo's Tetuzi Akiyama is electric. At just over half an hour it is all too short but the music on this disc is impeccable. The playing is inventive, abstract and full of energy. While far from perfect, I enjoyed it immensely. Phantom Limb and Akiyama do not employ flashy, over-the-top techniques but build on solid grooves and noise to make compelling music.
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The piece begins with some uncomfortably pitched drones accompanied by ominous thuds and bursts of distorted guitar. It seems like the sound is spinning around my head and occasionally dive-bombing through my skull. Before it feels like my ears have taken all they can, Hot Ginger morphs into a soothing barrage of gentle noise. This is noise in the musical sense as opposed to the Merzbow sense. It reminds me of that fuzzy, warm glow that comes out of the speakers when I listen to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. This is a lot more harsh despite the openness of the piece when it gets into full swing. A menacing undercurrent runs through the performance and the tension builds and builds but never breaks. It makes the piece more gripping as I am on edge waiting for the inevitable crash which incidentally never comes.
Eventually the piece peters out into a glistening drone which is soothing after the force of the preceding 20 minutes. The menace soon returns, bringing with it harsh feedback and some fucked up sounding organ sounds. This is not the strongest part of the piece, I would prefer if the wall of sound from before had kept going for longer. Still, Hot Ginger regains its momentum after a few minutes meandering and finishes satisfactorily with the guitars buzzing and throbbing through the mix. One player keeps using the cut-off switch on his guitar to great effect; he gets a great tone off it. The other guitarist builds up a strong rhythm with the two organs. All the players eventually slow down, allowing the piece to ebb to a stop beautifully.
There is not much information in the sleeve but I assume this is an improvisation given the performers involved, it certainly sounds like it was plucked from the ether. The sleeve is gorgeous—as usual with this label—a terracotta-colored card silkscreened with marvellous imagery. It gives no indication what the music on the disc will sound like but when listening to Hot Ginger it all makes some sort of sense (what sort of sense I have not decided yet).
Hot Ginger is sometimes great, sometimes not. Luckily the greatness far outweighs any of the less enjoyable parts. The simplicity of the playing allows the elegance of the music to shine through. They could have put a little more oomph into some of the performance but on the whole Hot Ginger is excellent. Really, my main gripe is not that there are too many bad points but it could do with even more great points.
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