More Uncanny “Orchestral” Sounds from Fujii

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

The latest album to be released by Satoko Fujii on her Libra Records label is a new recording by the Satoko Fujii New York Orchestra entitled Entity. As usual, Amazon.com seems to be unaware of this release, but CDs can currently be purchased through a Discogs Web page. My last encounter with this ensemble took place at the end of 2017 with the release of the album Fukushima.

Changes in personnel between these two releases have been minimal. Alto saxophonist Oscar Noriega is now joined by Briggan Krauss. The rest of the saxophone section remains unchanged: Ellery Eskelin and Tony Malaby on tenor and Andy Laster on baritone. The trumpet section of Dave Ballou, Herb Robertson, and Natsuki Tamura remains unchanged; but this time there are only two (rather than three) trombonists, Joe Fiedler, and Curtis Hasselbring. The rhythm section still consists of  Nels Cline on guitar, Stomu Takeishi on bass, and Ches Smith on drums.

The album Fukushima was clearly named after the catastrophic accident at a Japanese nuclear reactor. When I wrote about the album, I observed that the sorts of sonorities one associated with the instruments in the ensemble tended to be not just unfamiliar but downright alien. I suggested that the proximity of Tokyo to Fukushima was almost too frightening to contemplate and that Fujii’s album was her way of dealing with the horror of the experience.

In that context Entity is a far more abstract offering. Nevertheless, Fujii is still using her particular blend of instruments to explore unfamiliar sonorities. This time she seems to be making her own contributions to those sonorities by playing a synthesizer in addition to leading the ensemble through different phases of improvisation. (Fujii credits Butch Morris and his Conduction approach to directing free improvisation as a point of reference.) Thus far I have not managed to home in on the relationships between the sonorities on this recording and the titles of the individual tracks on which they emerge; but that just means that, like the Fukushima album, this is not just-sit-back-and-listen music.

By now regular readers probably know that I am easily “hooked” into following Fujii’s innovations. To be fair, however, the same can be said of the ways in which I approach listening to Cecil Taylor or the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Listening does not have to be confined to identifying familiar themes and learning new ones. Sometimes it involves a process of acclimating to unfamiliar sounds. Suffice it to say that I came away from Entity feeling as if I was revisiting some of my points of reference on the Fukushima album. That serves as sufficient grounds for spending more time listening to Entity!