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Search Result for Artist Eiko Ishibashi
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DC 921LP
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"Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O'Rourke toured Europe for two weeks in 2023, a wonderful passage through France, Switzerland, Italy and Ireland; Pareidolia, the duo's fifth collaborative release, is a remix made up of resonances from those shows. The movement of sound in each performance and the relationships of sound between them; a dynamic medley of color and shape to pulse through earbuds, speaker cones and the air immediately surrounding you. Improvisation is the preferred collaborative mode for Eiko and Jim. They both prepare separately, without discussing anything beforehand. The dialogue in the moment determines the performance; anything that takes place is a possible point of departure, allowing for a unique experience each time they play. These 2023 shows marked the first time Jim and Eiko had played together outside Japan. Perhaps the flow of parts unpacked from their respective computers was inspired by the experiences of the tour: the nature of the assembled audience, the quality of the meal on the day at hand. Additionally, Eiko played flute and they both played a bit of harmonica intermittently throughout the performances. These live acoustic signals were routed back to the hard drives, to provide further material to play with -- and as they traveled, recordings of the previous nights' shows were among the materials for the next performance. With all this to play with, there was much fun to be had every night. Pareidolia's final mix is one further rearrangement of the elements -- comping -- say, a bit of Jim from Paris against Eiko in Dublin for a minute, before bringing them both back into the same room for a spell before another set of interactions comes into play. The choices and edits represented here make yet another unique dialogue, as well as a kind of "best" version of what they were doing on the tour. The sense of inevitability in the parts as they flow together might suggest structure; happily, this occurs without Eiko and Jim really committing to anything of the sort. Their available sound sources could present as a hot-wired noise onslaught, with all faders up full. Endless possible interpretations to be had on either side of the experience! This is one of several ways that the LP title and sequence of song titles come into play. Listeners hearing something more should have a good look in the mirror and perhaps consider the old saying: 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.' It could only help."
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"Antigone is Eiko Ishibashi's new album -- a musical masterwork rife with chilling speculations, all calling from inside her own head! For Antigone, her first album of songs with lyrics and singing since 2018's acclaimed The Dream My Bones Dream, Eiko teases out images from a dystopia not unlike the one we've already got. Hers is suffused with a 'scene missing' quality, its continuity laced with sudden, odd details sprung like traps from within her music's smooth, expansive sound. It's a clash of context with Eiko's serene vocals and the well-appointed precision of the soundscape, uncanny, disturbing, not entirely okay. That's it working! And it keeps ticking like clockwork through the whole album. An accomplished keyboardist/multi-instrumental composer and improviser, Eiko consolidates her conceptions throughout Antigone. On her early song-based albums -- 2013's sci-fi-themed Imitation of Life and 2014's poptastic Car & Freezer, listeners sensed an album-oriented direction, built song by song into an inevitable whole. 2018's conceptually-united The Dream My Bones Dream allowed Eiko to tell stories closer to home. Her instrumental works since then -- 2022's For McCoy (Black Truffle) and the soundtracks for Ryusuke Hamaguchi's films, Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist -- have seen her diversity of musical ideas operating in an increasingly integrated long-form presentation. With these transformative encounters in hand, Eiko and her band -- drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, bassist Marty Holoubek, Norweigan accordionist Kalle Moberg, Ermhoi on backing vocals, Joe Talia playing percussion and Jim O'Rourke on Bass VI, synths, etc -- bring a wide array of sounds and moods to the songs here, referencing pop, funk and jazz, ambient, electronic and musique concrète in a seamless flow. Antigone is a bittersweet look at our already-alternate reality, Eiko's jarringly personal vision glimpsed through a latticework of ambitious compositions and on-lock production techniques."
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"The inspiration for Album l and Album II began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance, the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film Drive My Car was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spar who featured Ishibashi on their then new album Under Pressure. It was these previous collaborations that triggered the seven friends to take part in an extended session which resulted in these two new recordings, the first of which contains a variety of short pieces while the second boasts one continuous epic, album-length track. These recordings are a development of Von Spar's collaborative ambitions, where Sebastian Blume, Jan Philipp Janzen, Christopher Marquez, and Phillip Tielsch have previously invited special guests to their home studio to help realize a vision -- a methodology exemplified on their last two releases, Street Life and the aforementioned Under Pressure, which featured contributions from Marker Starling, Laetitia Sadier, Vivien Goldman, and R. Stevie Moore. On Album I, the percussion and drums phase in and out in a bold and skillful manner and form the framework for delicate guitars and complex progressions on the keys, all resulting in somnambulistic city-pop pieces like the opener, grooving electro-jazz reminiscent of the early 2000s, and fusion. You can also hear elements of contemporary jazz explorations from New York, LA and London, or reach back further to the Chicago post-rock of the early '90s. Album II with its expansive, experimental nature goes one step further featuring Yamamoto and Janzen's jagged percussion serving as the bedrock for a menacing and otherworldly arrangement of wind instruments to float in until essential sampler work by Joe Talia brings everything to a lively conclusion. These two albums may have the same origin but they are wildly different pieces of work, both exciting in their own way and proof that daring to experiment with freedom and trust in your collaborators can lead to musical highs such as these." --Lars Fleischmann, 2024
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BB 458CD
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"The inspiration for Album l and Album II began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance, the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film Drive My Car was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spar who featured Ishibashi on their then new album Under Pressure. It was these previous collaborations that triggered the seven friends to take part in an extended session which resulted in these two new recordings, the first of which contains a variety of short pieces while the second boasts one continuous epic, album-length track. These recordings are a development of Von Spar's collaborative ambitions, where Sebastian Blume, Jan Philipp Janzen, Christopher Marquez, and Phillip Tielsch have previously invited special guests to their home studio to help realize a vision -- a methodology exemplified on their last two releases, Street Life and the aforementioned Under Pressure, which featured contributions from Marker Starling, Laetitia Sadier, Vivien Goldman, and R. Stevie Moore. On Album I, the percussion and drums phase in and out in a bold and skillful manner and form the framework for delicate guitars and complex progressions on the keys, all resulting in somnambulistic city-pop pieces like the opener, grooving electro-jazz reminiscent of the early 2000s, and fusion. You can also hear elements of contemporary jazz explorations from New York, LA and London, or reach back further to the Chicago post-rock of the early '90s. Album II with its expansive, experimental nature goes one step further featuring Yamamoto and Janzen's jagged percussion serving as the bedrock for a menacing and otherworldly arrangement of wind instruments to float in until essential sampler work by Joe Talia brings everything to a lively conclusion. These two albums may have the same origin but they are wildly different pieces of work, both exciting in their own way and proof that daring to experiment with freedom and trust in your collaborators can lead to musical highs such as these." --Lars Fleischmann, 2024
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BB 459LP
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"The inspiration for Album l and Album II began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance, the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film Drive My Car was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spar who featured Ishibashi on their then new album Under Pressure. It was these previous collaborations that triggered the seven friends to take part in an extended session which resulted in these two new recordings, the first of which contains a variety of short pieces while the second boasts one continuous epic, album-length track. These recordings are a development of Von Spar's collaborative ambitions, where Sebastian Blume, Jan Philipp Janzen, Christopher Marquez, and Phillip Tielsch have previously invited special guests to their home studio to help realize a vision -- a methodology exemplified on their last two releases, Street Life and the aforementioned Under Pressure, which featured contributions from Marker Starling, Laetitia Sadier, Vivien Goldman, and R. Stevie Moore. On Album I, the percussion and drums phase in and out in a bold and skillful manner and form the framework for delicate guitars and complex progressions on the keys, all resulting in somnambulistic city-pop pieces like the opener, grooving electro-jazz reminiscent of the early 2000s, and fusion. You can also hear elements of contemporary jazz explorations from New York, LA and London, or reach back further to the Chicago post-rock of the early '90s. Album II with its expansive, experimental nature goes one step further featuring Yamamoto and Janzen's jagged percussion serving as the bedrock for a menacing and otherworldly arrangement of wind instruments to float in until essential sampler work by Joe Talia brings everything to a lively conclusion. These two albums may have the same origin but they are wildly different pieces of work, both exciting in their own way and proof that daring to experiment with freedom and trust in your collaborators can lead to musical highs such as these." --Lars Fleischmann, 2024
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Modern Obscure Music presents Sakuraza, a live album featuring Eiko Ishibashi (flute and electronics), Jim O'Rourke (electronics), Kei Matsumaru (alto saxophone), Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (drums), and Giovanni Di Domenico (piano). Recorded at the Sakuraza jazz club in Kofu, Japan, this dynamic and sophisticated performance blends jazz, electronic music, and pop elements. Giovanni Di Domenico, a frequent visitor to Japan, organized this June 2023 concert with long-time collaborators Ishibashi, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto, and invited saxophonist Matsumaru. The warm, intimate setting of Sakuraza provided the perfect backdrop for their unedited, improvisational session. Sakuraza captures the deep musical connection and spontaneity of these artists, offering an immersive auditory experience. Recorded on June 14, 2023.
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DC 934LP
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2024 repress. "Evil Does Not Exist is an expansive new soundtrack undertaking from Eiko Ishibashi, a stellar further display of her ability to explicate the depths of the unspoken in her music. That it is also the soundtrack to the new Ryusuke Hamaguchi feature is marvelous news for all who loved her score for his Oscar-winning 2021 film, Drive My Car. That her music harmonizes effortlessly with the state of nature as depicted in his film, a nuanced tale of humans' uneasy efforts to maintain co-existence with the delicate state of the planet, is a further profound achievement. At play here, though, is much more than fantastic new music from a powerful new film -- it is evidence of a vital recomposition of the relationship of sound to narrative, and composer to filmmaker. The impetus for this came when Eiko was asked by overseas promoters for a program of live performances backed by visuals. After some thought, she asked Hamaguchi if he would make something for her to use for this purpose. This led Hamaguchi to develop the script further, with sequences of dialogue. In the end, he made two works: Gift, a silent film to act as a visual score for a live performance by Ishibashi, and Evil Does Not Exist, his new narrative feature film, which provided the visual material for the silent film Gift and features Eiko's music as its soundtrack. This is a fittingly synergistic exchange within their two disciplines, in which the moods and intentions of the music and the film acted in practical conversation: each one a sovereign statement, made possible by its relationship with the other. Eiko's compositions are scored for violin, cello, guitar, drums and keyboards. Her longtime partner Jim O'Rourke played the guitar and mixed and mastered the recordings when they were done, eliciting further the necessary nuances of atmosphere and mood that one would expect in one film, much less two!"
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WE 002LP
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For the exhibition "Flowers in 20th and 21st Century Art", Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O'Rourke had created the installation Lifetime of a Flower in which they set parameters but allowed the process itself to grow uncontrollably. Literally: in the garden of their Japanese house, they planted seeds and filmed the plant growing and thriving throughout the duration of the exhibition. Visitors were able to watch the stream in real time -- and they heard a composition in which Ishibashi and O'Rourke reflected the organic process in sound. The eponymous composition now available on LP, is an enigmatic and sophisticated layering of sounds, melodies and rhythms, noises from everyday life, all of which are repositories of associations, memories and expectations.
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DC 727LP
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2022 repress. "Eiko Ishibashi's sixth solo album, The Dream My Bones Dream, rides the rails into a partly envisioned, partly imagined past. Eiko's previous songs-with-singing records explored the ambitions and intoxications of pop music -- but never so dramatically as with The Dream My Bones Dream. Here, her songs open up into reflections upon the vast spaces that exist between people as close as family members -- in other words, reflections on the things we spend our whole lives drinking and cursing about! When we're not trying to forget what we were told about god, that is . . . It's been four years since Car and Freezer, a time during which Eiko has been steadily working, writing for stage and cinema, playing live and recording (and hanging out with her no-goodnik boyfriend!). In 2016, she toured Europe and released Kouen Kyoudai (Editions Mego), a collaboration with Masami Akita. At Sinnerfama Lisbon later that year, she won the Best New Music Award for her soundtrack to The Albino's Trees. In 2018, Black Truffle released Ichida, her collaboration with Darin Gray. Amongst all this abject jet-setting and debauched gadding about, the music of The Dream My Bones Dream started to gather. It began with the death of Eiko's father. Going through family effects in the aftermath, she found photos from a time she knew nothing about: her father's childhood. A taciturn man, he had never discussed this period of his life. Classic dad! As it transpired, it took place in an infamous setting of recent Japanese history, the occupation of China's Manchurian region in the 1940s. In the light of this, questions about Eiko's lost family history took on a larger resonance. No, not war crimes! Please try and keep your head out of the gutter. We're talking about lyrical things here -- the ever-changing relationships between people and places in our lives, okay? The music is richly conceived in cinematic arrangements with details referencing Eiko's grandfather, who worked as a railroad man in occupied territory. The few images Eiko had to base her exploration on are set in shifting landscapes colored by the unreliable narrators of history. For Eiko, the train that ran through this rough terrain is now headed for her future, and only by accepting its past will she able to direct it through what is to come. Something to think about, yeah? We at Drag City are hopeful that this musical message will be blared down the main streets of Fascist Everytown, USA -- at least until they come to get us! On The Dream My Bones Dream, as with Eiko's previous albums, the diverse sounds within the musical arrangement and the qualities of Jim O'Rourke's mix (off the couch and mixing again!) are crucial to the achievement. The Dream My Bones Dream is a record of exquisite musicality and deep emotions, a travelogue pointed towards a time hopefully better than the future we see coming down the line! Any eventuality where we can listen to The Dreams My Bones Dream would be preferable to that one."
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BT 084LP
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2025 repress. Black Truffle announce For McCoy, a new work by Eiko Ishibashi dedicated to the widely loved character of Jack McCoy, portrayed by Sam Waterston in Law & Order. Following on from Hyakki Yagyō (BT 064LP), For McCoy finds Ishibashi further exploring the unique space she has carved out in recent years, bringing together musique concrète techniques, ECM-inspired jazz, lush layers of synths and hints of pop into immersive and affecting structures crafted in her home studio, aided by a group of close collaborators. Beginning with overlapping layers of descending flute lines, the expansive "I Can Feel Guilty About Anything" (whose two parts stretch out over more than thirty minutes) unfolds with a free-associative logic, embracing dreamlike transitions and unexpected cinematic cuts. As a hovering cloud of synthetic tones and multi-tracked voices fans out from the spare opening moments, Joe Talia's skittering cymbals settle into a gently propulsive groove, soon joined by melodic fragments performed by Daisuke Fujiwara on multi-tracked saxophone. As the drums cede to field recordings and ominous synth figures, the uncommon meeting of saxophone and electroacoustic techniques call to mind the more spacious moments of Michel Redolfi and André Jaume's Synclavier-propelled oddity Hardscore or the early work of Gilbert Artman's Urban Sax. As the piece continues on the LP's second side, distant dialogue rumbles beneath a surface of processed flutes, blurring into a cavernously reverberant backdrop for stark ascending lines performed by MIO.O on violin. Eventually, the piece settles into a gorgeous passage of abstracted dream pop, where Ishibashi's multitracked vocal harmonies glide atop synth chords, errant pings and snatches of outdoor sound. Fragments of melodic material reappear throughout the spacious opening piece, finally stepping to the forefront on the closing track, "Ask Me How I Sleep at Night". Here, over a shuffling groove supplied by Jim O'Rourke on double bass and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto on drums, layers of flutes, saxophones and guitars sound out melodies whose combination of twisting irregularity and soulful immediacy calls up prime Keith Jarrett, while their closely voiced harmonies suggest Kenny Wheeler or even Wayne Shorter's Atlantis. In a classical gesture of closure, the web of melodic lines eventually leads back to the descending flute figures with which the record began. Presented in an immersive, impeccably detailed mix by Jim O'Rourke and arriving in a sleeve featuring Ishibashi's beautiful drawings of Jack McCoy, For McCoy is an essential release for anyone following the enchanted and unique path being forged by Eiko Ishibashi.
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2025 repress. Black Truffle announce a new solo album by Eiko Ishibashi, her first for the label, following on from the duo recording Ichida alongside bassist Darin Gray (BT 039LP, 2018). Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) was produced for the "Japan Supernatural" exhibition at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney focusing on ghost stories and folklore from the Edo period onwards. As with The Dream My Bones Dream (Drag City, 2018), the album is a response to troubling questions about Japanese history, and the influence of the past upon the present, but finds Ishibashi shifting further away from her earlier piano-led songwriting and showing a deepening interest in electronics and audio collaging. The two side-long parts of Hyakki Yagyō feature layered synthesizers, acoustic instrumentation, recited verse, and field recordings, at times densely mixed but always with a subtle interplay of changing elements. The influence of European and American forerunners as diverse as Alvin Curran, David Behrman, and Strafe Für Rebellion can be traced, yet at the same time Ishibashi evokes the flute and string sounds associated with Japanese storytelling, and draws directly on the subversive literary tradition of Kyoka ("mad poetry") with a verse by the 15th-century poet Ikkyū Sōjun repeated throughout the album. Revisiting what has gone before, re-thinking what is possible musically, as a way of articulating what else might be possible in the future. As Ishibashi's liner notes make clear, the album reflects an attention to persistent dangers, myths and evasions in Japanese culture -- as well as the lurking uncertainties that might threaten positive change. This would seem to be manifested in the emerging melodies soon met by dissonance, erratic collisions, and near silence, as well as the eerie manipulation of the double-tracked vocals. Ishibashi's underlying concerns ring true more widely of course. Hyakki Yagyō is a work of multiplicities, and mystery, a landscape where nothing is as it seems at first, and everything is vulnerable to sudden violent interruptions. The album was produced with regular collaborators Jim O'Rourke (double bass) and Joe Talia (percussion), and features dancer and choreographer Ryuichi Fujimura performing Ikkyū's satirical tanka. O'Rourke's immersive mix creates a three-dimensional effect, with Ishibashi's various sound sources enmeshing and interacting in captivating ways. White vinyl; inner sleeve featuring artist portrait and liner notes from Eiko Ishibashi. Cover and label design by Shuhei Abe. Back cover design by Lasse Marhaug. Mixed and mastered by Jim O'Rourke.
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BT 039LP
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2025 repress. Black Truffle present the release of Ichida, the first release from the duo of two important, yet often underappreciated musicians, Eiko Ishibashi and Darin Gray. Ishibashi is a singer-songwriter, keyboardist, drummer, and multi-instrumentalist, known in Japan both for her own elaborately conceptual solo albums and for her frequent collaborations with figures such as Jim O'Rourke, Merzbow, and Phew. Darin Gray is a bassist and multi-instrumentalist known for a multitude of collaborations (with O'Rourke and Loren Connors, among many others), for On Fillmore, his cinematic post-exotica project with Glenn Kotche, and as one half of Chikamorachi with Chris Corsano, one of the finest free-jazz rhythm sections around. Presenting the entirely of a live set performed at Tokyo's Super Deluxe in March 2013, the set begins as a duet for Ishibashi's flute and Gray's upright bass. Calmly melodic yet harmonically inventive, with shades of "spiritual jazz", the pair's acoustic ruminations are gradually joined by Ishibashi's lush electronics, which randomly flicker between chords in a manner recalling the classic work of David Behrman. As the electronics build into a gloomy fog of slowly cycling loops, Gray lays his bass aside and turns to making strangely mournful interjections on a mouthpiece. Eventually Ishibashi moves to the piano, enveloping the audience in rippling pools of sustained, octave-doubled melody, provided by Gray's bass with a fluid and dynamic foundation. For much of the second side, both Ishibashi and Gray turn to electronics, ultimately arriving in a bizarre space of melancholic arpeggios and random sputter and sizzle, oddly reminiscent of '70s outsider prog acts like Wapassou. An uneasy coda of rich piano chords ends the set. Captured in warm room ambience and beautifully mixed by Jim O'Rourke, Ichida is a rare combination of improvisational acumen and emotional directness, both adventurous and immediately accessible. Cover pics by Jim O'Rourke. Design by Stephen O'Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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EMEGO 216LP
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Prolific Japanese artist Masami Akita aka Merzbow teams up with session musician, producer, and singer-songwriter Eiko Ishibashi for a work that showcases yet another side to Akita's monumental catalog. Kouen Kyoudai consists of two side-long tracks that could be read as a contemporary take on the traditional avant-garde. With its skittering electronics, percussion, piano, doom, and noise, Kouen Kyoudai seamlessly incorporates many strands of experimental thought and practice. The tension that arises from the human use of the tool is made explicit as these works unfold in a storm of ecstatic human/instrument/machine interaction. Drums hammer alongside an ecstatic drone. Notes on a piano jostle with a storm of splintered electronics. Kouen Kyoudai highlights the pull between beauty and chaos; structure and the abyss -- leaving behind a thrilling display of the interplay between the human and the technological while opening up new paths for both musicians involved. Masami Akita: noise electronics, computer, drums. Eiko Ishibashi: piano, drums, synth. Recorded at Gok Sound and SuperDeluxe, Tokyo. Recorded and mixed by Jim O'Rourke. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin 2015. Photography by Shunichiro Okada. Design by Jacob Cates.
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DC 612LP
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"Since each album requires its own approach, the session for Car and Freezer provided another chance. In the spring of 2013, Eiko convened with her band -- but in contrast with the previous album, she did not come prepared with arranged demos. Instead, she and the band stared unblinking at each other for DAYS, seeking to divine the elusive communal flow for her songs! No, actually, Toshiaki Sudo, Hatano Atsuko, Yamamoto Tatsuhisa, and Jim O'Rourke all got it right away -- make Eiko's kind of pop music, but bring themselves forward in their playing. In this approach, Eiko was drawing from her background of improvised music to inform the direction of her new songs. Guest musicians Shinpei Ruike on trumpet and Daisuke Takaoka on tuba added to this process by playing with sensitivity and focus along with the band. In the booth, O'Rourke also doubled as producer, providing directions for Eiko to choose from while moving forward in her unclear path. The new approaches clearly paid off: the sound of Car and Freezer has a swinging openness, with looser, rolling rhythms that suit the mood of exploration and the sense of introspection that are so much a part of Eiko's songs. The band's expertly precise playing is contrasted by their intuitive choices within the songs, which are seized upon by Eiko for mood and color. And Jim doesn't hurt the sound a bit by focusing on interesting and unconventional sounds whose presence in the mix help define a sense of the unexpected."
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2022 restock. "Drag City presents the first domestic release of any kind from the Japanese singer-songwriter Eiko Ishibashi -- and the first vinyl release of any kind on this already accomplished performer. And what a release! Imitation of Life isn't just another pop record from another part of the world -- it's got a sci-fi theme and is produced by none other than Drag City's old friend, Jim O'Rourke. With an understanding of band dynamics developed through her many live shows and recordings, Eiko's delicate, precise compositions are arranged with a dramatic-yet-humorous prog-pop sound. Eiko plays piano, vibraphone, and flute as well as nylon-string guitar, a first for her, on Imitation of Life. The flowing backgrounds she has conceived for her light, sweet melodies are captured by O'Rourke with a lively sense of play, which matches Eiko's lyric concept. The lyrics in this album embody a science fiction story which brings the album to a challenging new level. The variety of sounds, the impact of lyrics and her imagination keeps expanding, and in the latter stages of the album, the songs achieve a shattering impact."
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