A beautiful Luso-Japanese triangulation that carries in each of its vertices a whole craft and knowledge as broad as it is distinct, but equally open to a space of communal sharing. Of sensitive and detailed understanding, as are their respective works.
Eiko Ishibashi and Riki Hidaka already have a long complicity, amassing years of constant practice in Ishibashi’s band – which visited ZDB a few years ago – and in Jim O’Rourke’s ‘Simple Songs’ band, from which another triangulation was born that gave birth to ‘Okioishi’, where Hidaka’s guitar meets Ishibashi’s flute and piano and O’Rourke’s synthesizer to create two long pieces of sinuous and languid contemplation. Far from the classic cut of ‘Simple Songs’ or ‘Car and Freezer’ but equally vital for understanding both artists’ broad understanding of music and sound, equally valuable across the realms of experimentation, song, sound art or installation. In his own domain and in more recent times Ishibashi has collected high praise for his soundtrack for the award winning ‘Drive My Car’ and released on Black Truffle what will probably be the first album made as a tribute to a Law & Order character – ‘For McCoy’ and it’s stupendous – while Hidaka has released recorded music for the exhibition ‘A Calendar for Painters Without Time Sense. 12/12’ by Toru Kuwakubo. Living music.
On this side we have Rafael Toral, a musician about whom we run no risk of hyperbole when we consider him one of the most important musicians for the advancement and discovery of new forms born here – from the skewed rock of Pop Dell’Arte, through the environmentalism of the seminal ‘Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance’ and ‘Wave Field’ and electronics on No Noise Reduction and various solo incarnations of his Space Program. An artist with a superlative past in the more out music but with an equally sagacious and pioneering present and potential future, who over the last decade and a half has been particularly informed by jazz, attested to in absolute agreement with his Space Quartet, but has discovered at a deep level his own language and expression. A continuous act that leads him to a relentless search with a new stage in 2017’s ‘Moon Field’, a disc-portal to another universe. Always expanding. BS
