Nana Horisaki on the Ridge: ただの動き Mere Motion (CD)

Nana Horisaki on the Ridge
ただの動き Mere Motion
haptic perception
Japan, 2023
Compact Disc

Landing in between Horisaki’s two solo albums and made up entirely of songs from each, Mere Motion is the work of a band called Nana Horisaki on the Ridge. It has more of a live feel than the other two and is almost, in a way, the best. Hearing these songs performed by a tight, sympathetic trio points up both their intentionality and their strangeness.

The rest of the group consists of Akihiro Sugiyama on bass and synthesizer and Katsuo Kameyama on drums and “candy” (Pop Rocks, is my best guess). For the most part, their playing is subtle and sympathetic, Sugiyama’s bass locking into Horisaki’s jerky rhythms and Kameyama lending understated accents until, on “Pot,” he makes an absolute CHOICE, tearing out of the stable with a galloping rhythm that feels barely tethered to the implacable composition that keeps bubbling calmly underneath. The unexpectedness mirrors the joy of Horisaki’s work in general: a vibrant pattern that zigs and zags with alternating pleasure and surprise.

It all adds up to an unlikely document, a set strange enough to turn up as a lost live document on An’Archives and sweet enough to file next to Tenniscoats.

If you’d like my advice, I’d line up all three of these CDs for a perfect little evening in: Pot, Scoppi, Mere Motion, back to back. Let the music work its magic, and I expect it won’t be long before you drop in on it again.