JAZU: Jazz from Japan. Review. Shinpei Ruike, Unda

The music of trumpet player Shinpei Ruike evolves at each new recording yet keeping intact its basic features. Among them prevails an exciting marriage between the electric and acoustic dimension and an urgency of expression rare and effective. This second album as a quintet (the first one was published last year and documented the live recording of a concert held at Velvet Sun in Tokyo) captures all the energy and charisma of one of the most innovative and daring musician in Japanese jazz scene.


Since the very first track (Unda), which also titles the full album, the basics of Ruike’s plans are unveiled: the willingness to speak out his own identity and artistic vision through a music that takes deep roots inside the spirit of the performer. His sound, often filtered and altered by electronic devices, remarks his volition to explore the possibilities of his instrument searching for a new language able to translate in music the wide range of emotions which inspire this musician.


Compared to the his previous recordings as a leader, (Unda is the sixth of his discography) the traits of his music, if possible, have become more rough and nervy, due to the sharp presence of guitarist Takuya “Tak” Tanaka, who already joined the band in the previous quintet recordings, confirming himself as an ideal partner for the sonic geometries of the band. Tanaka bends the sound of his six strings rolling out dexterous electric notes, moving through improvisational paroxysms that remind the scratches of Japanoise scene (Tupamaros), all the way to the enraged metal riffs exposed in Duna, a track that hits the listener like a fist in the face.


In Ruike is clearly visible a strong artistic personality that pours inside his music intimate disquietudes (Es) or uneasyness, probably reflecting the strains of being an artist in a modern and complex society like Japan. Long notes soaked in lyricism, alternated with brief and edgy sonic strokes, represent the trademark of Ruike’s music which seems to design distopic worlds in which the piercing screams of his instrument rip plumbeous skies (Invisible) or emphasizes hopeful dawns (Piracuru).


Eveything is always crossed by an undercurrent tension who never ceases to go through the music textures, also thanks to the underground work of guitarist Tanaka and the rhythm section, leading most of the tunes to an abrupt stop as if someone had disconnected the electric supply for an excessive affective overload.


Drummer Daisuke Yoshioka, for his part, contributes with a jittery drumming (Es) always reactive to the mood swings of the leader, switching with confidence from drum’n bass technique (Polyhedron Girl) to funk and rock, assisted in the rhythmic support by bassist Koji Tetsui, both long-term collaborators of Ruike.


Among the tunes, all writen by Ruike, there’s room for the revisitation of Maiysha, a piece belonging to the repertoire of Ruike’s most fundamental artistic reference, Miles Davis. Indeed, many elements of Ruike’s music carry within the lesson of Davis’s electric era, but developed and conjugated to a dimension coherent with the contemporaneity: a music, apprehended from the jazz Greats of the past, but capable to projects itself into the future embedded, citing one of Ruike’s past album titles, in a “distorted grace” which is the fulcrum of his music conception.



Links:

Shinpei Ruike – Danu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EbIYEkPd_w

Shinpei Ruike – Unda (Official Album Sound Sample): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN5imWGAmT4