If you are searching for an easy listening experience, look away now.
Gate is based in Tokyo and started out as a solo vehicle of Lajos Ishibashi-Brons (Lajos). He conceived the project as an experiment in improvisation on multiple instruments, many of which he built himself.
These are often played simultaneously and distorted using loops or delay pedals.
The home made instruments include a sousen, an electric four string instrument used to create drones, and an electric morin khuur, an adaptation of a Mongolian stringed instrument played with a bow. Lajos also plays electric and bass guitar.
After three solo excursions, he has now teamed up with a Dutchman with the very Japanese sounding name of Takahito Hayashi (Taka). The result is Iterations; Gate's fourth release but the first as a duo.
Taka plays soprano sax, flute, ryuuteki (dragon flute), recorders, whistles, and didgeridoo; a relatively normal range of instruments compared to Lajos but by no means played in a conventional manner.
All the music is the product of free improvisation without scores or predetermined ideas and recorded in single takes with no overdubs. In a mission statement improvisation is praised in the following terms: "by exploring one's motivations and influences and becoming aware of those, such choices can (to some extent) escape the grasp of unconscious impulse and be free".
They get deeper into philosophical matters by quoting Spinoza's assertion that those who think that they are acting freely are usually just 'carried away by impulse' and expressing the belief that "human freedom is as illusory as the freedom of the improvising musician".
All this places Lajos and Taka squarely in a Catch 22 situation of striving for freedom of expression cognitive of the fact that freedom itself is a delusion.
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You will get the point that this is not music conceived as lightweight entertainment.
This is also evident from the track titles which are identified by numbers and letters (70e, 55e, 72e, 56e, 66 x1, 66 x 2 and 66 x 3) rather than anything so bourgeois as names. Even the duo's name is actually written as a symbol but is also pronounced and written as Gate.
After reading the philosophy and working methods of 'Gate' and learning that their influences include free jazz, noise, drone, doom and Japanese traditional music, the expectation is that the music itself will be a wild , unhinged cacophony of atonal abandon.
Surprisingly, Iterations is a relatively subdued affair. The long droning tracks evolve slowly, punctuated by saxophone honks and squawks or by eery sound effects. The latter are often akin to flapping of wings or someone searching desperately in a drawer full of metallic objects.
This makes for an undeniably strange and enigmatic album. There are no beats to tap along to or tunes to hum, but if you can live with its abstract concepts the effect is oddly calming.
LINKS:
Fluttery Records
Gate's website
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