Tokyo 1972
(Splitrec)
An alternative title for this extraordinary double album might have been The Shock Of The Now. That an album of improvisation made 42 years ago can sound so blindingly new is a marvel, and a tribute to the artistry of this ground-breaking Sydney band.
In 1972 David Ahearn (violin, percussion, electronics), Roger Frampton (percussion, electronics, saxophone), Peter Evans (percussion, electronics) and Geoffrey Collins (flute, percussion, electronics) recorded two long improvisations at a Tokyo radio station during a world tour. The tapes were recently discovered and this compendium of surprises is the result, the old “What is music?” chestnut being answered with the broadest-possible definition.
A remarkable aspect of the music-making is that the collective seems not so much to impose sounds on silence as pluck them from it. Daringly long pools of emptiness are gently ended by a gong, or shattered by sounds whose source can only be guessed at, sometimes involving such extremes of the sonic spectrum that you may fear for your speakers’ integrity. This is a major document of Australian improvisation.