Hiromi, Jazz Bakery, 4/12/07
By MFV - Sunday April 22nd 2007 |
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Hiromi comes from a school of fusion jazz and progressive rock that gets a retrofit through the power of her genius, and also through the novelty of her very existence.
First, the basics. Hiromi’s sound and style is reminiscent of eighties fusion rock bands like Weather Report, Spiro Gyra, Return to Forever, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and the Yellow Jackets, and falls outside the discography of modern noise. I was most impressed when she told me she’d been playing piano for twenty-two years and cut her teeth on King Crimson’s “Frame by Frame” — meaning she was only six years old when she did. Wasn’t I getting piss drunk at The Foundry, New Haven’s premiere jazz club, when I first syncopated 7/8? Hard to believe these kids are under thirty.
Technically, Hiromi is the best living pianist in the world. Prog Rock monster Keith Emerson went to see last Thursday’s performance and had his head buried in his hands the entire time. Look upon her chops ye mighty and despair!
Theatrically, she splinters piano hammers with her dexterity and speed, jumps to her feet within a sixty-fourth beat of a song’s conclusion, and makes grimaced faces as if she’s having some private, beautiful orgasm on the piano bench — all while wearing a body sock akin to something from the recent Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture exhibit at MOCA.
In melody and composition, how like an angel, in performance and energy, how like a god.
Cue-ball-headed American David Fiuczynski dabbles on a double-neck against Hiromi’s strange counterpoints at the same speed and precision. I thought he was going to be such an asshole when he couldn’t figure out how to turn on his amp at the beginning of the performance, but he’s alright. She’s picked him, I think, for his vivacity on guitar, his unapologetic approach to inventive and deceptively complex solos in the style of Alan Holdsworth. Tony Grey is an English bassist extraordinaire, superficially likeable, frowning at mistakes only he could hear. He could lighten up — I met him in the lobby, a poor, thin, introverted and pallid being, but a good bassist, narcotic to listen to, never out of his depth, and technically perfect. Drummer Martin Valihora is the weakest link, breathtaking in performance but repetitive, as if trying to hide an absence of creativity in a barrage of flam. But a good kid. He dropped his stick and someone from the audience tossed it back to him. Valihora caught it and came right back in. Applause.
Okay. On the flip side, a few of her compositions like “Time Out” reinforce the clichés of her chosen genre, although she swears up and down on her web site that she doesn’t have one. I could have used less of those standard Planet Jazz numbers and more of the pure mind-blowing, technique-driven, frontal lobal shredder time jams on her latest, Time Control, put out by snobby European jazz label Telarc International.
Judge for yourself at her MySpace page.
Some of the stuff is so freaking abrasively random that it was on my nerves even as it blew me away. “Real Clock vs. Body Clock = Jet Lag,” a cartoonish experiment that gets pumping with unpredictability at odd moments, modulates from tormented elevator music to the personification of one of those fucked up Japanese grocery stores where frog’s legs are on the same shelf as Bactine. It’s… Well, what gives, Hiromi?
So picture a dream outfit with Allan Holdsworth on guitar, Jaco Pastorius and Trilok Gurtu on drums and percussion, shredding all the songs King Crimson ever wrote — hell, all the songs I never wrote — and you have a starting point. For $35, you too should witness her while she lives and breathes.
HIROMI
With guitarist DAVID FIUCZYNSKI, bassist TONY GREY & drummer MARTIN VALIHORA
Jazz Bakery
April 12, 2007
There are a whole bunch of fabulous videos by the Fuze’s old band the Screaming Headless Torsos on youtube.
Hiromi’s awesome, of course.
This sounds like something that I would have loved when I was 17. I was a prog and fusion geek in those days–Dream Theater was my first real rock concert, I had most of Rush’s discography, etc. I can’t stand most of that stuff anymore, but I still love King Crimson.
I do know that if I saw Keith Emerson at a show I’d give him a wedgie.
She’s highly extraordinary or prodigious, choose. No mistakes. A mistakeless set. Good of you to come clean, Pete. I have guilty pleasure for Yes, “Fragile” and Bill Bruford’s Earthworks. (Shh!)
MFV you need to revisit RELAYER if you’re into yes…
that album is the bomb
Pete you go revisit it too.
I said it. Hell, I said it!
Ryan, my brother is a huge Yes fan, so I’m quite well acquainted with their discography. The B side of Relayer is actually pretty good. “Sound Chaser” is gloriously ugly, while “To Be Over” has some moments that are absolutely sublime. The sidelong epic on the A side, however, was boring to me even in the days when I loved sidelong epics.
As long as we’re talking about Yes, the first four studio albums are all great. The next five, except for a couple cuts on Going for the One and the aforementioned side B of Relayer, are the auditory avatar of a Trekkie with wispy facial hair, a fedora, a black trenchcoat, and a bookshelf full of O’Reilly programming manuals.
Wait…you weren’t one of those dudes, were you, Ryan?
Dammit man you’re forgetting ‘soon’ at the end of side A. You have to listen through 15+ minutes of seriously grueling shit to get to the good part of side A. Sort of a task/reward situation. Give it a go. Call your bro.
Will anyone stand up for Trevor Horn? Will no one have mercy on him! CHANGES is syncopated 18/8 before the trashy pop metal break. LEAVE IT is fine vocal precision however hokey. Do not underestimate their one pop album for it splashes the brainless glitz of early eightified hard rock against shoals of quarter-free JOUST games and the innovation of Disney’s EPCOT. Just listen for it.
I should write a defense of 90291.
ok, “leave it” i agree with your assessment. but “changes” is some serious pap, syncopation notwithstanding. It could just as easily be ASIA I’m listening to.
Back to the greatest album they ever made, though. One of the reasons I like relayer may be the fact that moraz seamlessly replaced wakeman (sacrilige? discuss). Unless you’re watching them live going “hey where the hell did the dude with the cape go?” you would never hear the personnel change-up. Here you have a guy who’s blowing the entire band’s album advances on dozens of ludicrous organs and the like, meantime Jon Anderson continues to wheeze effortlessly about dragons and 20-sided die without spending an additional dime. I’d wager the whole band was shitting its collective pants while wakeman was amassing his walls of keyboards. He had that shit stacked so high he couldn’t even reach the top equipment! I am unable to find the footage to back this up @ present. Give me time…
As a bit of a jazz snob, I just want to point out that Hiromi plays fusion, not prog rock. To my ears her most obvious influence would be Chick Corea, but on her myspace page, she says, “I love Bach, I love Oscar Peterson, I love Franz Liszt, I love Ahmad Jamal,†she says. “I also love people like Sly and the Family Stone, Dream Theatre and King Crimson. Also, I’m so much inspired by sports players like Carl Lewis and Michael Jordan. Basically, I’m inspired by anyone who has big, big energy. They really come straight to my heart.â€
Definitely picked up on the carl lewis influence.
I need to continue my Yessian dialogue with Sir Ryan, but in terms of Hiromi’s fusion influences, did you know she performed onstage with Chick Corea when she was eleven? He kept asking her if she could play, then if she could improv, and finally he called her up at the end of his show to jam. I think she’s more toward the Alan Holdsworth/Bruford school, at least with Sonic Boom.
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