Yuji Takahashi / Sabu Toyozumi: The Quietly Clouds And A Wild Crane

Unlike most drum and piano duets, where the keyboard gets all the best lines, Sabu Toyozumi and Yuji Takahashi craft a truly egalitarian meeting of minds on The Quietly Clouds And A Wild Crane. Recorded in 1998, it represents another bulletin from the vital Japanese free scene of the period issued by the Lithuanian NoBusiness imprint in collaboration with Chap Chap Records.

Toyozumi may be one of the more recognizable names from this milieu, given his regular excursions to the West. At one point, he even became the only non-American member of Chicago's pioneering AACM. His partners have included artists as varied as trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, guitarist Derek Bailey and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. By contrast, Takahashi's renown resides in his work as a composer and performer of contemporary classical repertoire by Schoenberg, Webern, Cage, Xenakis (who he studied under in Berlin) as well as earlier works by Bach, and Satie. Clearly, then, this is an unusual encounter.

As a consequence, this music falls outside the avant-garde tradition. The two long tracks, each around the half-hour mark, follow an elusive path in which juxtaposed events and a confluence of moods sometimes seem as close as the participants come. But then one of those moments arrives which reveals the listening that has been going on all along, as in the delicate percussive dialogue at the end of "Lovely Silver 6000 km." Takahashi often takes a simple linear approach, sometimes almost like a nursery rhyme, then, at other times, offering a stream of evenly articulated notes which suggest he might be familiar with Cecil Taylor.

Toyozumi similarly avoids a polyrhythmic approach, instead producing a balanced sequence of unconventional textures from earthy drums, tappy percussion and untethered gongs and cymbals. Perhaps in recognition, he garners the lion's share of the solo space. Further accentuating the percussive nature of the date, Takahashi also wields various devices, notably at the beginning of "Shoulder Blade And Hip Joint" where his knocks, rattles and shakes abut Toyozumi's abrasions and rustles. Proceedings turn more demonstrative later, as crashes at the extremes of the keyboard match the drummer's bombastic strikes. It ends with fast rippling piano underpinned by reiterated whistle blowing and cymbal shimmer in exchanges which suggest an unseen theatrical element to the performance.

For those seeking approaches to improv removed from the norm, this session might just hit the spot.