(Avant-Garde, Free Improvisation, Abstract, Experimental) [WEB] Tetuzi Akiyama / Oren Ambarchi / Alan Licht - Willow Weep And Moan For Me [EP] (2004) {Antiopic AN009, USA} - 2006, FLAC (tracks), lossless

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Remove the chugging rhythm of the blues and you are left with the wail; that slow motion ghostly gasp of sorrow and bad omen. The high and lonesome sound of something wicked on the horizon is ingrained in this trio's shadowy and disembodied take on the blues. New York experimental music veteran Alan Licht, who has explored similar territory in his beautiful duo with Loren Connors, is joined by Australian sound artist Oren Ambarchi and Japanese improviser Tetuzi Akiyama at the 2004 Bomb the Space festival in Wellington, New Zealand. Using guitars the trio create an alien and minimal free-blues drone. Akiyama and Licht both revel in the spirit of blues guitar, intertwining high melodic lead lines and creating clusters of tense tone. Ambarchi is a master at low end drift, and here the repeating low tones serve almost as a mutant version of a 12 bar anchor. All three players are deft at combining emotion with abstract playing (Licht's Rabbi Sky, Ambarchi's Suspension, and Akiyama's pieces for the Wooden Guitar series just to cite a few), and this set is an exemplary instance of engagingly emotive yet free playing.

"There are plenty of albums which would greatly benefit from being edited to fit on a 3" CD, but not many 3" CDs which would improve for being expanded to album length. A happy exception to the rule is this intercontinental guitar trio's teasingly short debut, a 19 minute improvisation recorded live in (of all places) Wellington, New Zealand in 2004. A strikingly simpatico grouping, they patiently weave melodic twangs, wavering drones and looming hums into a reverb haze, offering a tantalisingly brief glimpse of an enticing modern post-Mazzacane free blues demotic. Surely an album is not too much to hope for?"
- Nick Cain, The Wire No. 272
"Beautiful live trio stylings from these renowned string-slingers who together generate the kind of spectral blues that hang in the air with all of the ghostly, lugubrious weight of Loren Mazzacane's Saint Joan recordings or Jeff Cotton's lunar work with Mu. Recommended."
- Volcanic Tongue
"Sliced apart and dished up again, this is empty, desolate music, which however never sounds empty: the sustains melt into each other and form a great, majestic piece."
- Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly No. 541
"Ambarchi fornisce i timbri bassi(ssimi) mentre Akiyama e Licht duellano con la lentezza western di un Sergio Leone sonorizzato da MazzaCane Connors toccando vertici formidabili d’introspezione e (cognizione del) dolore. Un autentico capolavoro, venti minuti di purissima magia."
- Stefano I. Bianchi, Blow Up #101
"This is outright emotional playing—something that is rarely heard in this sort of a setting. While Licht and Akiyama set up the blues process—striking their machines gently, with thick slabs of pensive, bluesy guitar playing, Ambarchi provides a perfect counter-balance with signature sound worlds where each note is stretched for aeons. [...] One highlight is its sorrowful atmosphere that isn't easily forgotten after the recording ends."
- Tom Sekowski, GAZ-ETA
"... droning and eerie and abstract and evocative."
- Aquarius Records