The Thing & Otomo Yoshihide - Galway Jazz
The Thing
&
Otomo Yoshihide
Friday 21 November: Nuns' Island Studio, 23 Nuns' Island Galway
Tickets: 091569777
Available from: Galway Arts Centre or Town Hall Theatre, Galway
"Mats Gustafsson- saxophones | Ingebrigt Haker Flaten- double bass | Paal Nilssen-Love- drums | Otomo Yoshihide - guitars/turntables
"The sheer power they generate from wood, metal, breath and muscle is stunning."- BBC Music
"Tapping into rock's most primal forces with the fire and fury that's something to behold." – Mojo
Join us for an evening with The Thing if you think you're hard enough, for an hour or so in the company of these three Scandinavians should permanently rewire your perceptions as to what lies beyond the accepted jazz frontier.
The confrontational, uncompromising trios of saxophonists like Berlin's Peter Brotzmann are the point from which The Thing depart into a sound world entirely their own, and free jazz has seldom sounded as exhilarating and life affirming as within the maelstrom of sonic energy unleashed here.
Barely subduing the volatile materials are three outstanding European musicians in Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafson and Norwegians, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. Such is their ubiquity and obvious rapport, the latter pair have been waggishly dubbed the Sly 'n' Robbie of improvised music. Keen ears will find a plentiful sub strata of rhythmic invention and subtlety lying just beneath the undeniable storm that rages on the surface.
Most saxophonists would wilt in such an environment, but not the sonically muscular and technically daring Gustafson, who relishes this searing intensity, as collectively they go about their transgressive work on songs from sources as diverse as PJ Harvey and Don Cherry, The White Stripes and Ornette Coleman.
Joining them on this dissonant road less travelled is the pioneering turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, a formative figure of Japan's noise music scene, whose music, largely preoccupied by the exploration of feedback and hardly audible sine waves, staunchly inhabits the margins of electronica, rock and free jazz.
Links to Otomo Yoshihide's work:
Website: http://www.japanimprov.com/yotomo/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJw9az9vAf4
