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Rating: In certain cases, it's difficult to describe what one feels—I mean, when writing about albums like this. With the necessary distinctions, I'd say I feel like a Telemarket/pictorial arts section presenter: it's just past two in the morning, I've been talking for about three hours, and the room is nearly empty because all the paintings have been reserved. All, or almost all. There's still one left, back there, almost in the corner. It's not a flashy painting, not at all telegenic, maybe 40 x 30—not more. It doesn't attract anyone's attention, so much so that silence reigns in the studio; the phone doesn't ring, no one calls anymore to reserve it because the artist is perhaps the student of a student of Mario Schifano's cousin's friend and no one notices him. And I need to find the right words to draft a description, to attract the interest of any insomniac who might still be listening to me.
Now: I'm not selling anything, rather PROMOTING—if you'll allow the term—and I'm just a regular at the historic Elefante. But the album I'm promoting is somewhat like a painting of that kind: a potential record with 2, maybe 3 comments on Debaser. And so, you might ask, why bother talking about it...? I speak, I answer, because it is worth it. And it's a TZADIK product, no less. Heard of it...? Just by adding such a detail, you could get to 5/6 comments, and some more might already be listening intently. Others will steer clear of it, others will distrust the cover, fearing they are facing yet another Asian hoax disguised as a (fake) masterpiece. So I anticipate: this album is not a masterpiece. But the music contained in it is something unique in the world. And if not unique, if there is something out there similar to these two ladies, it's certainly particularly rare. If you don't believe it, feel free to read on.
"Syzygía" means "pair" in Greek. But finding pairs like this is not so easy. A jewel of the "New Japan" series, the duo born in the '80s from the union of Hiromi Nishida and Hitomi Shimizu does something they call "microtonal pop". The first, a violinist; the second, graduated in composition, author of soundtracks for television and electronic games, and above all an organist; only she doesn't use just any organ, but the 43-TONE organ developed by Harry Partch. It emits an exceptionally acidic, psychedelic, bizarre sound, bordering on lunacy. And its blending with the violin produces an even more unusual sonic mixture, perfect for melodic pop portraits but also for psychotic deviations of atypical noise. The Syzygys took their first steps in Tokyo when it was still the mid-'80s; and their "daring" combination of violin and microtonal organ remained underground for a long time until Zorn collected the compositions of the pair, scattered in a diaspora of singles and EPs, and released a "Complete Studio Recordings", which to this day remains the first step for anyone wanting to approach them.
Almost simultaneously, this gem was released, which is nothing more (easy to understand from the title) than a live recording from the early period of our duo, still active during Shimizu's "rest" periods—or more simply, when she feels like it. The album is structured like a Puzzle Magazine: it starts with easy, purely entertaining games, and page by page, the difficulty increases, reaching more difficult and refined moments. In other words: Hiro and Hito keep the best for last: at first, they make you believe their microtonal trick is something accessible to everyone, and as time goes on, they bewilder you with complex instrumental paintings, with a much more massive "psychagogical" potential. All this with the help of session-men, to compensate for the missing instrumentation: perfect, clean, and well-refined sounds, so much so that more than a doubt will arise about the authenticity of the live performance, or at least about the possibility that the other instruments (starting with the drums) were overdubbed later. But all this is relatively unimportant...
...because all there is to do is enjoy the variety of a sound that spans from the Beatles-like echoes of "Niva" to the stupid song "Eyes On Green," from the almost R'n'B of "Suicide On A Fine Day" to the sunlit Caribbean backgrounds (transplanted to Southeast Asia) of "Fruits Of Passion". Sketching an uncertain "pastoral cha cha cha" under a very light "lotus rain," halfway between an unclassifiable example of folk not so close to California, offbeat ballads, and a bossa nova for Japanese vacationers. Also risking losing your head among the dissonances and hysterical scales of a "Syzygy Rider" that recalls the Lounge Lizards, or in the hallucinatory and vertiginous crescendos of "Abyssinian Cat". Or, if you prefer, in the unparalleled five minutes of the closing "Fonce," "dragged" into a chaos of distant and spectral sounds...
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