Short Reviews [Tatsuya Nakatani & Shane Parish - 2020 - "Interactivity"]

Tatsuya Nakatani is an avant-garde percussionist and composer, while Shane Parish is a known for his work fronting the electric and aggressive, avant-technical duo Ahleuchatistas. The two have been collaborating for nearly a decade, performing improvised duets in Parish’s hometown, whenever Nakatani’s annual world tour brought him close by. This is their second album together, recorded in a live environment on June 10th, 2018. It had been five years since the release of ‘Anatomy of a Moment’, with both of them busy working in their other projects (Nakatani has released more than 80 albums over the years, solo, with his own projects and in multiple duos), yet there is a strong bond between the two as one can tell from the music at hand. We are given three pieces, some 44 minutes in length, which are taken from the day of improvisation. While Parish plays his acoustic guitar in a somewhat normal manner, he is reacting and interacting with a percussionist who is quite unlike anyone else I have ever come across. Nakatani not only plays an unusual combination of drums and gongs but approaches them in an unusual manner so they will not all be struck and could be stroked to provide the sound he wants. Then on top of that he is approaching music from a Japanese viewpoint as opposed to Western, and the result is something which sees different cultures and ideas crashing into each other in a musical format which is experimental, challenging, avant garde and so much more. This is an album which will polarise listeners as there really is no middle ground: either you will really like this, or you will really hate it. This is an album for those of us who know we enjoy music so far away from the mainstream as to be in another universe altogether, and we are all the richer for it. Chaotic, beautiful, and to my mind indispensable.