Varianter av døde trær

Guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama is an anomaly on the onkyo scene: he doesn’t treat extreme minimalism as if it were sacrosanct. This central figure to the genre-setting Off-Site concerts is just as beholden to ’70s rock and folk-styled finger-picking, making every one of his outings unpredictable. Even so, Varianter av døde trær, his record with a trio of Norwegian horn players, is almost confounding in it’s structural simplicity. It’s an ordered work for four improvisers (Akiyama on guitar, Mertin Taxt on tuba, Eivind Lønning on trumpet and Espen Reinersten on saxophone and flute) without composer credits but proceeding according to an agreed-upon modus operandi. The group plays a seven-part, 25-minute suite, sometimes holding a single note in unison, other times playing sparse, quiet sounds, occasionally making obvious references to acoustic blues and New Orleans brass bands. Then, they do it again, working through alternate versions of the same movements, excising a couple and dropping in a new electric guitar piece with slow, distant horns, then they wrap it up with yet another repetition of the opening single-note piece. As a whole, it manages to be both familiar and perplexing, and staggeringly beautiful.

Tokyo guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama has spoken about provoking elements of «primitivism and realism» and deploying extremes of textures and dynamics to convert his body into an «electronic entity». Here he's performing with three Norwegian improvisors - Martin Taxt (tuba), Eivind Lønning (trumpet) and Espen Reinertsen (tenor saxophone, flute) - in a set that sculpts tactile sound objects out of the fundamental characteristics of their instruments. Opening track «Tverrsnitt Av Fuge» is a drone. At first Lønning's middle distance vibrato-less trumpet dominates, but careful listening reveals greather depth - Taxt's tuba shadows the trumpet, as Reinertsen's tenor piles on the partials in between. But guitars don't function well within drones and Akiyama's presence only makes itself felt in the next track. He digs back to the sound of Delta bluesman, skirting around riffs, as his fingers evoke a slide guitar. His gestures are vigorously articulated and broken up with busy silences. In answer, the wind trio ignore his implied stylistic reference, instead quarrying into the sonic DNA of Akiyama's twangy overtones to fire back caterwauling multiphonics and growls. 
The pointilistic mechanics of track three are as different again; track four is a trippy guitar solo, while the fifth piece hints at jazz figurations. The realisation dawns that Akiyama has designed each number as a distinctive character piece. And then a climatic bombshell - after track seven, the album flips back on itself, reiterating earlier material in shortened versions, building a palindrome that transforms content into form, as you twig about how catchy his material was in the first place.