Daniel Ryudo
|
seamless whole, earthy shakuhachi soundscape, positively rocking, practically su
Brian Ritchie's new album Ryoanji encompasses traditional Japanese pieces from a thousand years ago to the present and even spins into 60s jazz and modern music while remarkably managing to present a seamless whole. The pieces meld together well, from ethereal gagaku -- ancient Japanese court music -- in the piece Etenraku, though honkyoku, or wandering Zen monk pieces and Japanese folk songs up through Steve Lacy's Blues for Aida, and modern music, the latter represented by John Cage's composition Ryoanji, based on Cage's measurements of the patterns in the famous Zen rock garden of the same name in Kyoto, Japan. Ritchie weaves an earthy shakuhachi soundscape with his jinashi bamboo flutes supplemented with tympani, upright bass, gongs, woodblocks, and other Asian percussion. The album opens with a folk piece called Kiso Bushi, starting off with a rollicking bass and drum beat, and soon Ritchie spins from basic melody into the kind of improvization that he does so well. Apparently John Cage wrote the title piece Ryoanji with the shakuhachi in mind, and in Ritchie's version, the garden of sounds is at times even a bit ominous, somewhat reminescent of King Crimson's "Red" days with one's consciousness of time's passage heightened by the ma or space between the isolated percussive beats. The folk piece which follows, Soran Bushi, gets positively rocking with its rhythmic bass line and funky shakuhachi and bass soloing. Komoriuta, a lullaby by Japanese romanticist composer Fukuda Rando, builds up atmospherically with gongs and cymbals and had me visiting scenes from Kurosawa's classic swordplay flick The Seven Samurai in my mind. Kojo No Tsuki, or castle in moonlight, a popular standby in Japan, was cast in a much darker mood than is usual, practically supernatural, with its bow played bass, wailing bamboo flute, and percussion like the clanking of ghostly chains. The cd ends with a rich and meditative Tamuke, a requiem piece played on a longer, large bore flute. Brian "Tairaku" Ritchie, already well known for his skills with the bass guitar, clearly demonstrates his technical virtuosity and jazz chops on the bamboo flute while managing to retain the unique tonal characteristics of the shakuhachi.
Read more...
|