Soft Mountain
Hux Records HUX084
Touring Japan in 2003 under the identity of ‘Soft Works’, Soft Machine’s Hugh Hopper and Elton Dean stopped-off at Gok studio in Tokyo on 10th August for two ad-hoc sessions with composer/keyboardist Hoppy Kamiyama. Though not quite in the league of Sun Ra in terms of prolific output, Kamiyama’s career has yielded some two hundred albums of “art-noise-punk-funk,” making him the perfect foil for Dean and Hopper’s more avant-garde experimentalism.
With Ruins and Acid Mothers Temple drummer Yoshida Tatsuya completing the quartet, named after the English translation of Kamyama’s name (‘God Mountain’), they improvised two forty-five minute jams of free-form jazz, which have been condensed down onto this release as Soft Mountain Suite PT.1 and PT.2.
The first cut (running at 30.40) is a cool late-night jazz blow, centred on Dean’s saxophone playing, whilst the other (at 27.55) is a more percussive piece shared between Hopper’s bass and Tatsuya’s busy drumming. Captured whilst Dean and Hopper were on their way to re-establishing Soft Works as the Soft Machine Legacy Project, it’s by its nature at times an uncomfortable and discordant recording. But it’s also an absorbing insight into a couple of hours spent playing outside, or around, the dots.
Hux Records HUX084
Touring Japan in 2003 under the identity of ‘Soft Works’, Soft Machine’s Hugh Hopper and Elton Dean stopped-off at Gok studio in Tokyo on 10th August for two ad-hoc sessions with composer/keyboardist Hoppy Kamiyama. Though not quite in the league of Sun Ra in terms of prolific output, Kamiyama’s career has yielded some two hundred albums of “art-noise-punk-funk,” making him the perfect foil for Dean and Hopper’s more avant-garde experimentalism.
With Ruins and Acid Mothers Temple drummer Yoshida Tatsuya completing the quartet, named after the English translation of Kamyama’s name (‘God Mountain’), they improvised two forty-five minute jams of free-form jazz, which have been condensed down onto this release as Soft Mountain Suite PT.1 and PT.2.
The first cut (running at 30.40) is a cool late-night jazz blow, centred on Dean’s saxophone playing, whilst the other (at 27.55) is a more percussive piece shared between Hopper’s bass and Tatsuya’s busy drumming. Captured whilst Dean and Hopper were on their way to re-establishing Soft Works as the Soft Machine Legacy Project, it’s by its nature at times an uncomfortable and discordant recording. But it’s also an absorbing insight into a couple of hours spent playing outside, or around, the dots.
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