Inui

They Say...

Review by Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

The first volume of Japanese über guitarist Kawabata Makoto's Inui set the pace for all of his multi-instrumental improvisational recordings to follow. Here, Makoto plays violin, sarangi, oud, bowed sitar, bouzouki, lyra, shou, nei, and he sings -- or at least uses his voice as another musical instrument. On three long tracks, including the truly magical "Son," which covers all of side two, Makoto explores the notions of just intonation in much the same way La Monte Young did under the tutelage of Pandit Pran Nath with notable exception: He isn't interested in perfecting the drone. In fact, Makoto uses his instruments in such a way that the drone itself mutates, shifting and shimmering into other sub-drones and harmonic sonances that sometimes continue to move forward, sometimes stay static, and sometimes fall apart altogether. This is particularly true in "Tai," where Makoto and Audrey Ginestet employ their voices in tandem a full two octaves apart and move to allow the natural extension of the breath -- of each singer -- to follow the bowed sitar down a path for as long as it is in exhalation, and then pick up somewhere down the line of the sitar's journey up the neck. Time and space open and undo one another as each space in the music, which is ever moving and changing, becomes its own pathway to somewhere else referenced outside. Fans of the more easily found Inui, Vol. 2 will no doubt enjoy this, but fans of Makoto's rock bands such as Acid Mothers Temple and Mainliner should be warned that this may be a bit tame for them. Truly this is what Brion Gysin, Terry Riley, and Young had in mind when they were creating their own compositional magic in the 1960s. Makoto seems to have arrived there without all the baggage.