Kiki Band
Caught Live at Shinjuku Pit Inn
August 18
On a pre-typhoon Saturday night, Kazutoki Umezu’s Kiki Band scorched through two full sets of high-energy electric jazz that was its own atmospheric pressure front. The quartet came out hard, fast and loud, so much so that Umezu even apologized to the audience made up of fans of his various, uncompromising avant-garde takes on the jazz idiom. But no one interested in exploring the edges of jazz needed any apology, the exceptional intensity of the band was its own justification. Most obviously, the music was wrapped tight in the tough guitar sound of Natsuki Kido, but beyond the dense exterior of heavy-metal sonics and free-style blowing of Umezu’s sax, the songs revealed themselves to be superbly composed, cleverly played nuggets of gleaming post-modern jazz.
Drawing on their recently released CD “kiki,” with songs by Kido, Umezu and Jaco Pastorius-disciple Takeharu Hayakawa on bass, they crisply braided different musical threads into each tune. The first two numbers combined long flowing Middle Eastern modalities with a rollicking beat and Hendrix-esque guitar, echoing the CD’s “Moon Struck” and “Dancing Bones.” They followed with the progressive feedback fueled melodies on top of a country and western beat. Then, it was over to the reggae lilt of “SOLA” with Umezu blowing extended sax lines that managed to cover an immense amount of territory, both harmonically and sonically, without losing the method in the madness. The second set started off with a wonderful free improvisational duet, but quickly got back to the core of the bound’s sound, rhythmic intensity. Funkier rhythms rocketed Umezu and Kido further in their soloing trajectories. As the funk really kicked in, the realization sunk in that the exterior pyrotechnics had been supported all along by the solid, steady tempos of drummer Kozo Niida and Hayakawa’s fluency on bass.
The Kiki band seems to have solved one of the avant-garde’s biggest problems—knowing what to do with what they steal. The musical forms that many post-modern bands toy with all too often come out sounding like sarcastic, superficial imitations. The Kiki band, though, is comfortable and calm in its polymorphous perversity. They go right to the core of what they appropriate and use rhythms, styles and ideas like lightning rods. They explore without indulging themselves, express directly without being aggressively confrontational. They are arty without the pretence, which is quite a trick, actually.
The Coltrane- and Coleman-influenced Umezu was able to blow virtually any structure up to the bursting point, and yet, resolve this ballooning back into a satisfying order. Even when the balloon burst on a couple of tunes, Umezu, and Kido too, know how to clean up after themselves. Their exuberance in all this messing around was highly infectious. Umezu himself couldn’t help but dance around wildly on stage. The Kiki band sounds practiced and neatly together despite their impatient curiosity with prodding and provoking the received conceptions of jazz. What other band would end their CD with a cover of Ian Dury’s “Fucking Ada”?