Pere-Furu
Shinjuku Pit InnMay 21, 2014Natsuki Kido – guitarYuji Katsui – violinKazutoki Umezu – saxSamm Bennett – drums, percussion, voice, electronicsPere-Furu is as packed with pleasing tensions as any genre-bending, improvisation-loving band could be. Yet, to describe them that way misses out on how earthy, intense, joyous and wide-ranging the band is. They get on stage and play music stripped of limits: playing in and around and with genres, rhythms, expectations, and conventions. It’s a relief to have all those limitations tossed aside and hear four stellar musicians really play what they feel.Kido and Katsui make up the core of the band, with Umezu and Bennett as special guests. Starting out with just the core duo, their easy meshing was immediate. Kido and Katsui anticipate each other’s moves whether they are in a spacy modal groove or tucked into bluesy folk rhythms. They both use a lot of electronics, but they use them right. The electronics are not some geek fetish, but a means of extending and refining what they play, of making acoustic and electric indistinguishable.
Umezu jumped in on the second song, with a low droning bass clarinet that seemed to emerge from the depths of the earth. Bennett joined on the third song and the quartet was off and running. The taut interactions of the four players were marvelous. Each pulled the others, breaking up the last riff before starting a new one. The pleasure of the group is how they move from blues to free jazz to rock to bluegrass and yet still keep their own individual sound and the group sound unique.All the musicians play with an eclectic range of other bands, as leaders mostly, so they are full of great licks to play. They must be constantly deciding what NOT to play. Various riffs cascaded over riffs, like four human jukeboxes layering one song over the last seamlessly. I kept thinking, “Can these guys play anything?” and the answer was, “Yes, but just wait, there’s more!”
In the second set, Bennett added vocals on several numbers, or rather inside several numbers since once the four started playing they hardly needed or wanted to stop. His drumming sounded like wild thrash-folk, a New Orleans marching band parading through the Middle East. Kido upped the electric feel of his playing and Umezu blew harder and harder. Katsui’s violin soared with always the right sonic texture to enhance everyone else’s playing. With all these twists and turns, their great musicianship carried them far, but their wild creative impulses carried them even further.Peak after peak, they cranked up the volume and the fun, hitting on a riff and going for it until the next riff arrived. You think, “Hey, I know that guitar intro...” but before you can identify it, Umezu has already started into a Middle Eastern dirge or a Balkan two-beat. Before you can get your ears around that, Katsui has picked up the lead and shot off into the stratosphere. Bennett’s drumming anchored them all and then cut them loose, shifting between tempos and rhythms to shore up and push for more.
Walt Whitman in “Song of Myself” wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself! (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” Pere-Furu is a group that contradicts themselves with every turn of a musical phrase, every new musical thought, and with the multitude of music they embrace. Their contradictions, though, are what make them so refreshingly honest to listen to.