In an interview, Ishi referred to the profound effect the 2011 earthquake and tsunami had on him, on all his countrymen. “You know, you can lose your life any time…time is constantly moving forward.” With no time to waste, he defies the actual butterfly effect with his own quiet, nonlinear dynamism.
In smooth leopard stride, DJ Krush (Hideaki Ishi) releases his first album in just over a decade. His spots haven’t changed, he is still a master of the trip hop genre he helped pioneer back in the nineties, and with his hard-won appreciation for the frailty of life, he quietly, conscientiously continues to hone his craft, a reticent visionary. Ki-Oku, his 1998 collaboration with trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, an album that though seemingly sleek and serene reveals its complexity over time, has never collected dust on my shelf.
Fittingly, perhaps, Butterfly Effect opens with a track dubbed “Nostalgia,” a showcase for talented pianist Takashi Niigaki (“partner in crime” in a recent, and frankly bizarre, musical controversy) with the intimate conviviality of a small combo, while “Strange Light” is the result of a long distance, e-mail correspondance with Santa Ana’s Free The Robots, each adding layer upon layer of beats. Its clunky gait eventually lubricates into an intergalactic jazz-funk not too many light years away from the Sun Ra cluster. “Probability” has an easy, Jean-Michel Jarre irresistibility in its deep, to and fro analogue synth waddle.
“Everything and Nothing” is the first of three, non-consecutive tracks featuring a rapper (Divine Styler) and I’m in a lousy position to review rap, seeing as I don’t care for it, don’t like being preached or bragged at (even if it’s spit in Japanese, like Tha Boss’ “Living in the Future”—though the relaxed background and massed strings do contrast nicely with his high octane delivery). Lyrically, I prefer to be approached more obliquely, as on Beiruti Yasmine Hamdan‘s bittersweet, late night song “My Light,” which really takes flight when her voice is multitracked flocksize. At the same time, a Jamaican toast does please my ear, so I can get aboard with dancehall patois of MC Crosby Bolani (from “the most notorious slum of Gugulethu”), running down the history of South African social injustice and broken promises on “Sbayi One.”
With trumpet warbling (uncredited), circled cautiously by saxophone to the one, two, three of a piano, an echo of Ki-Oku drifts in on “Song of the Haze.” The guitar bursts on “Missing Link” sound like Buckethead; in fact, the entire cut sounds like the deconstruction of something by Praxis (are these possibly samples offered up by Bill Laswell, who is thanked in the liner notes?). The aptly named “Coruscation” is a sparkling twister and tumbler. Finally, the mind-wandering “Future Correction” brings us to Ishi’s thoughts on the fragility of being. In an interview, Ishi referred to the profound effect the 2011 earthquake and tsunami had on him, on all his countrymen. “You know, you can lose your life any time…time is constantly moving forward.” With no time to waste, he defies the actual butterfly effect with his own quiet, nonlinear dynamism.
Butterfly Effect is available on Vinyldigital.
