New “Pandemic” Gato Libre Album

Gato Libre is a trio I encountered for the first time in July of 2020, even though the group itself was founded in 2003. The founder was trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. He formed a trio which has gone through a variety of personnel changes. Currently the other members are Tamura’s wife, Satoko Fujii, playing accordion, and trombonist Yasuko Kaneko.

The title of the latest album is Sleeping Cat (and, as can be seen from the above image of the cover, it is in English, rather than Japanese). All five tracks are “about” that cat on the cover; but they account for different aspects of how the cat spends a typical day. Thus, the track titles, in order of appearance, are:

1. Sleeping Cat
2. Walking Cat
3. Running Cat
4. Eating Cat
5. Laughing Cat

I have to say that this is the first time I found myself laughing spontaneously (if not uncontrollably) at recordings made by either Tamura or Fujii. This has less to with the final track and more with Kaneko’s prodigious imagination in using her trombone to summon up a rich account of the many noises the cat makes while sleeping (and, presumably, dreaming). Those “sound effects” are hysterically funny, and I am pretty much certain that they were intended to be.

Ironically, due to the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this album was the product of mixing recordings made at different times. The initial recordings were made this past April by Tamura and Fujii at their home in Kobe City. Those tracks, as well as Tamura’s sheet music, were then sent to Kaneko, who lives in Okayama City. She realized her part on each track in May, sending those recordings to Tamura, who created the final mix of all three parts later in that month. In other words Tamura provided the cat of the title with a setting, and Kaneko realized the cat’s behavior by providing a “foreground” to Tamura’s “background” content. Since Kaneko has been a member of Gato Libre since 2012, one can appreciate her ability to engage with Tamura and Fujii even when they were all not in the same place at the same time.

As can be seen from the above hyperlink, Sleeping Cat is available through a Bandcamp Web page. In fact, as of this writing, the album is available exclusively from Bandcamp. However, at the present time, it is available only for digital distribution. Purchasing the album provides the buyer with downloads of all five of the tracks, as well as unlimited streaming through an app provided by Bandcamp at no extra charge. Sadly, there is no discount for cat lovers; but anyone that has ever owned a cat will readily recognize the five aspects of cat behavior provided by the tracks on this album with little difficulty.