Mouse On The Keys - Sezession

Country: Japan
Label: Machu Picchu Industries
Released: 21 Nov 2007
Genre: Contemporary / Jazz

Order DDCM-7002

CDEP @ HKD$100.00 Qty:

Shipping Rate: A

Details:

Mouse on the Keys is a jazzy instrumental trio from Tokyo, Japan. They partly used to play in “Nine Days Wonder” (a leading band of the Japanese post-rock scene) some years ago: Akira Kawasaki (drum, keyboards) and Atsushi Kiyota (piano, keyboards), along with Daisuke Niitome (piano, keyboards), who has played drums and composed music for jazz-funk/hiphop bands. The unique sound of the band’s drums, two pianos and two keyboards combines the urgent ’90s American posthardcore with early/contemporary classical, jazz and various electronic music. At their concerts, the band projects a variety of images chosen to match their soundviews of Tokyo, geometric symbols, 3D objects, and abstractions. “The drums are fantastic, the piano smooth and the other instruments masterfully used to make this record bliss… check out this album.

Review:
Hey, who hasn’t looked at someone holding a guitar and not prolapsed into fits of giddy laughter? Happens to me outside Shinjuku Station almost every day. The guitar is the most preposterous instrument ever invented. Look at it! Whether playing standing up or sitting down, it just doesn’t look right. Of course, the guitar has long been normalised as a tool of youthful expression by sheer exposure, almost erasing its inherent absurdity. But here, on these humble pages, I confer special attention on bands that have gone post-guitar: like the modern Boredoms, these bands are obviously onto something.
One such outfit is Tokyo’s brilliant, still-mysterious nu-jazz duo Mouse On The Keys, who opt not to jerk an electrified phallus around in their audience’s faces but make music with a drumkit and a piano that still, in the conventional parlance of arena car parks the world over, rocks.
This mouse tale can be traced back to 2006 when drummer Akira Kawasaki, a founding member of Tokyo down-tempo outfit Nine Days Wonder, got together with pianist Atsushi Kiyoda to make minimal phase piano music with a galloping rock beat. Inspired by British post-minimalist composers Steve Martland and Graham Fitkin, Mouse On The Keys issued their debut mini-album Sezession late last year on Toe’s Machu Picchu Industrias label.
Sezession is four tracks of pure instrumental scintillation. Every Japanese who has heard this has only had two words to describe it: “Kakko ii!” (”Cool!”). Faced with the insurmountable difficulty of choosing just one track, I’ll ignore the obvious lead-off number and instead give you Toccatina: a rollicking tussle between jazzy and post-hardcore impulses with Hununhum’s saxophonist guesting to boot. – Japan Onchi

Tracklisting:
1  最後の晩餐
2  Toccatina
3  RaumKrankheit
4  A Sad Little Town

最後の晩餐 (Music Video)

Order DDCM-7002

CDEP @ HKD$100.00 Qty:

Shipping Rate: A

(Japanese DVD Edition, NTSC, 4:3, Region Free)
Free improvisation may have provided the original touch-paper for Exias-J’s inception as a group, but by the time of the performances documented on this DVD we had gradually begun to move beyond it as a category. For instance, we began to incorporate deliberate internal structures in the form of [...]

Vowels is a band comprising James Rutledge and drummer Chris Walmsley. Like all Rutledge’s other work, it’s deep on the sonics, meticulously crafted and truly mesmerising.
Krautrock at heart, it’s a brutal and cosmic melange of sound and rhythm, where Terry Riley like keyboard motifs entwine with Battles intensity drumming and clouds of audio detritus, gamelan [...]

Though primarily thought of as a jazz composer and pianist, Scottish artist Bill Wells has many feathers in his cap. He has recorded joyous blowouts with the Bill Wells Octet, moody dream-tones in the Bill Wells Trio, Billie Holliday songs with Isobel Campbell, and an album of sampler-led madness with Jad Fair, along with performing [...]