Satoko Fujii & Tatsuya Yoshida

A few years ago, someone very sick indeed had the idea of taking Japan’s premier avant-jazz pianist Satoko Fujii and sitting her on a stool opposite goateed beast of difficult improvisational drumming Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins, Akaten, a million more). We only mention this because today’s previous outfit Mouse On The Keys has started the day off on a fine drums vs. piano note.

The association started when Yoshida, a titan of the Japanese underground, picked up sticks in the free-jazz/avant-rock fusion group The Satoko Fujii Quartet in 2001. Life as a performing duo began with a show at the Victoriaville Festival in Quebec in 2002, which led to the release of the live album Toh-kichi the same year. The album Erans followed on the Tzadik label in 2004 and sounds like this:

Satoko Fujii & Tatsuya Yoshida - Snyguilp

This is very outré musical jousting indeed: drummer Yoshida seems to be trying to lead throughout much of Erans, requiring Fujii to play kissychase with some manic key rattling. While this kind of music may serve little function other than to soundtrack cartoon mice as they chase each other up and down the stairs and whack each other with rubber mallets, all God’s creatures deserve their soundtrack.

Of her drummer, Fujii says: “His approach of improvisation is very different from jazz musicians. He is a great improviser and it is big fun to play with him because his way to approach music is totally different from me and I am inspired many times. He strongly pushes things without any hesitation. Many improvisers use different colors so the music will not have ‘extreme color’, but Yoshida uses the exact same color so the music has strong garish color with a sharp shape.”

We say: “Prash! Klang! Tin-Kan-Tinkle! Galumf! The solo and other works of both Yoshida and Fujii are also highly recommended.”