Ono Ryoko - Undine

Hi. Err, I'll just act like I wasn't gone forever and keep on posting.

If there's one thing I hate in music it's albums that I can't decide if I like them or not. Undine is a prime example of this totally serious and important struggle that I keep having in my important and totally serious life. On paper this album should be everything that I like in music. A female saxophonist from Japan that plays in all kinds of bands and also does solo free jazz in her spare time oh and she also plays with Tatsuya Yoshida in Sax Ruins (which sounds as exactly as it's called). What's not to like? But every time I start this album I can't help but to wonder why I haven't trashed (recycle-binned?) it already. The problem is that the album starts with such weak a boring sax doodles coupled with extremely uninteresting electronic drumming that it makes me skip the whole album altogether. Eventually after those few tracks the album goes on in a more traditional sense with multiple sax improv tracks but it's nothing really groundbreaking or original (at least from my layman knowledge perspective). Then a comes along a track called Birds which is a vocal/sax duo rendition of a famous Charlie Parker tune and after that the album keeps getting better and better with much more imagination. But the best track comes near the end titled Tarkus. It's a cover song of a famous prog track (if you haven't heard it you definitely should) but boy does it go wild and furious. It's also played by a full band which makes it so much more interesting than the rest of this album. So yeah, the only real reason why I keep this album is probably because of that cover song, it's just that great.

Not only is it a great track but it also shows how much Ono Ryoko is great at her playing. Seems like (for now) she works best in a band setting. From what I gather she's relatively new in the scene and is just getting more renown so there's lots of time for improvement on her solo stuff.

Check it out at least for that one song I keep talking about.

Get.