Browse by Artist: ISHIZUKA, TOSHIAKI

Artist:	ISHIZUKA, TOSHIAKI
Title:	In The Night
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	PSF 107CD

"Second solo album (the first was self-released a few years back) from the dynamic Vajra drummer. The more diligent PSF linernote cataloguers amongst will doubtless also have noticed Ishizuka's long involvement with folk-poet Kazuki Tomokawa's group, an involvement that dates back to the seventies. Back then Ishizuka was best known in Japan as part of the legendary ur-punk group Zuno Keisatsu. He is also the leader of the elegant cinematic (funnily enough) Cinorama, a frequent collaborator with Kan Mikami, and all-round irrepressible drum-slinger for hire. In the West, Ishizuka is probably best known for the martial powerhouse thunderstorms he calls down with PSF supergroup Vajra, but, as this album shows, there's a lot more to him than plain old sweat and muscles. Complexly layered gong tones, bottomless toms, and a multi-varied rhythmic sense that is all his own. The whole thing is shot through with a most appealing sense of fiercely still concentration. This is one of the deepest and, dare we say it, most spiritually resonant percussion records you're going to hear this year." -- Alan Cummings

Artist:	ISHIZUKA, TOSHIAKI
Title:	Drum Drama
Label:	PSF (JAPAN)
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	PSF 165CD

"New solo work from the Japanese underground's drummer of choice. Six years on from 1999's masterful Red Night, Toshiaki 'Toshi' Ishizuka is back with a new set of deep, shimmering nightscapes for percussion. Toshi has been a pivotal figure in the Japanese underground since the late '60s, when he founded Japan's first radical, politically-engaged punk group Zuno Keisatsu. Since then he has been the sticksman of choice for howling folk-poets Kazuki Tomokawa, Yasuki Fukushima and Kan Mikami, as well as making up one corner of the Vajra trio with Mikami and Keiji Haino, and leading his own group Cinorama. More recently he has been active in the Sanjah trio with Mikami and altoist Masayoshi Urabe. Drum Drama is Toshi's third album of solo percussion. The first, Kaze no Yami, was released in a miniscule edition in 1991. Since a full reissue is for various reasons impossible, Toshi has included two mesmerizing pieces from Kaze no Yami here, alongside three new pieces. Toshi has a unique approach that blends overtly textural work (rubbing cymbals, rolling metallic balls, bowed gongs) with mountain-deep kick-drum bombs and flashes of staccato martial snares. The results are deeply evocative nocturnal landscapes of immense percussive variety, subtle, lyrical, cinematic and even soulful. Another major statement from an unsung thinker." --Alan Cummings

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