ISHIZUKA, TOSHIAKI - Drum Drama

New solo work from the Japanese undergrounds drummer of choice. Six years on from 1999s 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 Japans 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 Toshis 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