Satoko Fujii Quartet “Vulcan” (Libra Records) 2001

Pianist Satoko Fujii’s latest CD starts out with a droning chant from drummer Tatsuya Yoshida that sounds like some bizarre ancient ritual honoring the god Vulcan, after whom the CD is titled. After four minutes, though, the quartet kicks into a Spanish-like vamp that starts hammering the anvil of free jazz with wild abandon. Well, the label “free jazz” fits this quartet only in part, a better term might be “intense jazz.”  Most structures are abandoned. Most listeners will find there are few obvious, clear melodies at the start. Indeed, on several cuts, it feels as if the recording started mid-jam. But that’s good, very good, since all the unbound energy allows wondrously experimental forms to emerge out of the chaos. The quartet spares us all the predictable fluffing around that usually distracts from getting right to the molten core of creative impulse. Fujii’s husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, wastes no time jumping in to pull and push his lines to find out just how flexible they are. Fujii’s startling bangs and smashes on piano drive the group as furiously as any bebop comping. But, on many tunes, the lovely, “Footstep” for example, she slows down to play around with a lightness of touch meandering along the keyboard. The powerful bass playing of Takeharu Hayakawa gives all the tunes a solid back on which the other three can hang their ideas. Though the first three tunes aim for a raucous drive, and achieve it, many of the other tunes are unafraid of a fragile, delicate disjointedness. At points, the disparate elements converge into recognizable forms—a classic march, traditional swing, stately bolero, or driving free jazz solo--only to have the centrifuge button hit again and the parts spun out in all directions. It makes for fascinating, though hardly comfortable, listening. “Vulcan” stands above most examples of free jazz by carefully and skillfully re-prioritizing musical elements. Energy, directness, and sheer pleasure in the aleatory are emphasized over considerations of swing, coherence, niceness and audience reaction. The music on this CD, like Fujii’s live concerts, is challenging (i.e., difficult to listen to), frenetic (i.e., confusingly arranged), ambiguous (what’s she trying to say?), and very, very powerful.