Reviews:

(Dead Angel) This brief cassette -- approximately seventeen minutes -- features two tracks on one side and one more on the other, all created by the duo of Bryan Day (homemade instruments, electronics) and Yagihashi Tsukasa (saxophone, voice, long strings). Like almost everything Day (the guru behind the Public Eyesore and Eh? labels) has been involved in, this is amorphous, improvised music of a deeply mysterious nature, less about songs and more about sounds and textures. Even with the instruments listed in the liner notes, it's difficult to tell what's being used to make these sounds, as the traditional instruments are employed in unorthodox ways and Day's homemade instruments are probably designed to create unfathomable sounds in the first place. The two interact in a manner that leaves lots of space between the inexplicable noises, occasionally coming together to create layered sounds but more often giving each other room to solo (in their own peculiar fashion). This sounds like it could have been an Eh? release -- it's certainly strange enough -- but there's a certain fascination for the listener in hearing these strange sounds and trying to imagine how they were created, and their compositions are nowhere near as random as one might expect from a cursory listen. Still, it will probably be a challenging listen for anyone who's not already hep to the arcane world of freely improvised music. - RKF