Lovingly pinched from The Sleeping Shaman: The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation are, for those unfamiliar, an improv sideline of members of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, coming at their improvised ambient jazz from a more drone/doom-informed angle than that of their parental unit.
Anthropomorphic is one hour-long piece of music comprised of three sections, or ‘movements’ if you will, attempting to express in musical form the idea of the ‘birth’ of music – hence Anthropomorphic, as, in the groups own words, ‘being born is human’ and to anthropomorphosize a thing is to ascribe to it qualities that make it more ‘human’. With me so far? Good.
Over the course of the piece as a whole, we have the ‘birth’ of music, the ‘growth’ of music and the ‘evolution’ of music, expressed via the organic, improvised interplay of the musicians. The segues between the three parts are basically seamless but can be differentiated simply by paying attention to the instruments involved at any given time.
Anthropomorphic is given ‘birth’ to by the shimmering soundbed of Eelco Bosman’s treated guitar and the plaintive, occasionally eerie and often surprising trombone of Hilary Jeffery. The trombone as an instrument of improvised music, and as a lead instrument as we have herein, is not generally one that is thought of as particularly subtle or flexible, but thanks to players such as George Lewis – whom you may know through his work with John Zorn – and Steve Moore – who you WILL know through his work with Earth, and as ‘Stebmo’ – and the featuring of Julian Priester and Stuart Dempster on Sunn’s most recent jaw-dropper Monoliths And Dimensions, it certainly seems to be gaining in credibility and recognition. Indeed, there are moments during ‘Anthropomorphic’ when one is unsure if it is, in fact, a trombone being heard and not – at differing points – a modulated trumpet, whalesong or even a theremin, due to the way in which Jeffrey stretches and expresses the music emerging from the instrument.
Continue reading: The Sleeping Shaman – The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation ‘Anthropomorphic’ CD/2xLP 2011.
Tags: Anthropomorphic, Denovali Records, Paul Robertson, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, The Sleeping Shaman
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 at 7:48 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
No Responses to “Album of the day: The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation – Anthropomorphic”