Two with Nakatani

N.R.A.
Untitled
H&H
HH-7

Tatsuya Nakatani/Audrey Chen/Susan Alcorn
Limn
H&H
HH-6

N.R.A. (Tatsuya Nakatani, percussion; Vic Rawlings, open-circuit electronics; Ricardo Arias, bass-balloon kit) is heard in a raucous, lively 2003 performance. Balloons, eh? Bass balloons at that. I don’t think I’d previously encountered Arias and going in, admittedly, I was a little skeptical. Not at balloons as a sound source, necessarily, but at what struck me as a reasonable likelihood that they’d be “abused” to some quasi-comic effect. Not to worry. Arias does fine work here, essentially creating sounds that might otherwise emerge (more or less) from extended bass techniques but with an added thwoomp that bespeaks of rubber enveloping compressed air. The pieces presented appear culled from longer performances (or, maybe, a single performance). They tend toward the active, even rampaging as on the fine fourth track where Nakatani and Rawlings set off some blistering explosions that send the trio careening and ricocheting wildly. The eight tracks are fairly short (the entire disc clocking in at around 40 minutes) and possibly the more effective for that as it concentrates the noise into digestible, tasty chunks. But the final cut, at a relatively sprawling eleven minutes, might actually be the most successful, more brooding and expansive, with Arias generating dangerous-sounding near-pops and the others producing more sustained tones with dark underpinnings, leading to a coda of furious sawing. A good, solid platter of noise, this one.

“Limn” is also sectioned into short tracks, 15 over the space of almost an hour. Nakatani is joined by cellist/vocalist Audrey Chen and, on several tracks, pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn. When Chen sticks to the cello, the results are strong and captivating, Nakatani routinely laying down creative and varied sounds and Alcorn, when present, filling out the space with shimmering (even Frisselian!) colors. I realize it’s become almost a cliché of free music criticism, but when Chen ventures to include vocals, as occurs on the majority of the pieces, things take a decided downturn, at least to these ears. Sometimes, as on the minute-long “Trilling”, her ululations cohere well with her companions’ material but more often, as on the first half of the longer (9 minutes +) “Eating a Volcano”, they’re distractions and aggravating ones at that (things calm down nicely in the improvisation’s latter half). Similarly her lip-thwacking scat singing on the appropriately titled “Liplash”. Outside of these episodes, it’s an enjoyable mélange of a disc. Chen’s vocals are actually offset rather well by a train whistle on “Dragon’s Den” and ably complimented by a wonderful, Nakatani-produced clatter. He’s in rip-roaring form on “Zipped”, a solo feature (if I’m not mistaken) that finds him rocketing through the space, shards of percussion banging around at impossible angles. For myself, “Limn” ends up ultimately as something of a mixed bag though, of course, others may find the vocal stylings right up their alley.