Takashi Kazamaki : "143 Ludlow st. NYC"

(Dossier, 1988)

143 Ludlow St. was the address of the Lower East Side (Manhattan) apartment of Japanese drummer Takashi Kazamaki during one of his extended residencies in New York. (It was also, I think, previously the domicile of Downtown Scene drummer, Katie O'Looney, who now lives in Southern France.)
On this LP, recorded in 1988, he works in two duos. Side one has Takashi playing with percussionist / electronic percussionist extraordinaire Samm Bennett. This series of brief highly focused duos treads a fine balance between Kazamaki's insistent, mostly acoustic drumming, and Samm's characteristic sampler-voiced playing. Sometimes Samm expands sonically and absorbs Takashi's rhythmic drive into his own more lyrical style; at other times Bennett gets underneath T.K.'s axle and pushes him out front, into some really hot stick-work.
Side two finds Takashi in duo with electric/acoustic harpist Zeena Parkins, who plays accordion on the final track. Here the pieces are generally longer, allowing Zeena to let fly with penetrating blasts and saw-edge staccatos from her wildly transformed harp (It's got a wang-bar on it!). This stands up against Takashi's convulsive snare drum for a music that is elegantly tenacious and virtuostic. Bumped and prodded, the harp speaks in a web of voices, a remarkable complexity of timbres that sound almost wrenched from the instrument with a crowbar at times, with a feather at other times.

(TAKASHIKAZAMAKI / « The improvisor »)

HERE

NB : an other great album called "Return to Street Level" (with Elliott Sharp, Tom Cora, Christian Marclay...) on LUCKYPSYCHICHUT blog : HERE