Silanganan Ingay

AMG Review of Silanganan Ingay

Eugene Chadbourne
All Music Guide

This is an early document in the chronology of freaking out by Japanese musical deviant Otomo, here heard in a duo with a partner who sticks mostly to toys. The two have a single track in which they duet on sax and guitar, an almost stock free improvising combination, but other than that they improvise in real time, with no overdubbing, on a spread of homemade instruments, turntables, cassettes, toy drum machines and mixers. Players that work in this milieu tend to refine their activities a great deal as they go along, thus it is instructive to hear these experimenters at what was an early stage in their career. There is already a great presence of mind in the way pieces unfold despite a superficial randomness and almost broken-down sound. There are quite a few very short pieces and these are uniformly successful abbreviations of what might have turned into long drawn out yawn sessions. Otomo in particular traveled a long way since this material is recorded, but listeners who enjoy his work will certainly find this recording of interest.