Sax Ruins - Yawiquo (2006)

Holy fancy get ready to have your lives enriched. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Japanese math rock scene should be instantly familiar with the duo Ruins. Well this venture is Tatsuya Yoshida, the powerhouse drummer of Ruins and Ono Ryoko, a highly skilled Japanese improv. alto sax player. These songs are reworkings of older Ruins songs with guitar replaced by the sax.....a lot of saxophones.  Think of some of the most rip roaring jazz with equal parts twisted prog and your starting to get close. This stuff is a dense mother and can be a bit much at times but it's certainly unique in its execution. An absolute not to miss album. TIME CHANGES WHERE YOU AT?!

yawiquo

Sajjanu - Pechiku

Already seasoned veterans of the Japanese progressive scene in other groups, Sajjanu carries on ideas and styles frequented by their geographical brethren Ruins.  My previous post on Nuito as well shares many similarities although Nuito are certainly the more grounded rock band if you can even say that.  This is classification wise spazzed out complex jazz-math. An interesting component here is no lead instrument being focused on which makes it that much easier for the songs to breath and shift. This is a sound of a band that is having fun while simultaneously charting time changes and abrupt pauses. Most technical groups are a heavy handed sort and strive for some sort of emotional charge that never comes.  You can tell by the chords chosen that the band is fully aware of this aspect, playful but not twinkly. Songs can run into one another and you cant exactly hold onto a riff without it being torn out from under you. After its over your left impressed yet without an exact memory of parts. This however is never the point of such ventures.
   


PECHIKU!