Tamio Shiraishi is one of the legends of the Japanese underground. For over forty years he has continued to pursue an utterly unique eruptive style of performance interventions into consensus reality. In recent years he has been a resident of New York City, where for the past three decades he has staged a series of performances around the subway system, utilising its unique sonic environment as an unwitting duo partner alongside his ebullient saxophone exhortations.

It is in the subway stations of Queens, NY that this exhilarating new release finds him - specifically '67 Avenue' and '63 Drive'. From the get-go, Shiraishi is fully immersed in the subterranean acoustic properties of the space, his trademark high-pitched, trembling saxophone notes cascading down the platform and into the tunnels beyond, acting almost as a summoning call to the train which soon rattles down the tracks towards him.

This initial beckoning (saxophone) bell is no aberration. Though Shiraishi takes a deeply reflective and responsive approach to his performances, as the album unfurls you get the uncanny impression that this responsiveness is far from a one-way affair. As the shuddering, sighing tones of the saxophone ring out against the ebbing, flowing screech and rumble of the subway trains it starts to sound as though they are listening back, and answering these calls in turn.

In the last three tracks, Shiraishi ratchets up the physicality, embracing the noisier environs of 63 Drive, which stands in contrast to the relative calm of the first half of the album recorded at 67 Drive. Here the trains clatter past in a body-shaking barrage that Shiraishi pitches his saxophone against in beautiful cacophony before letting himself be overwhelmed. But each train must continue on, leaving Shiraishi - and ourselves - left behind once again on the platform.

There's a viscerally evocative quality inherent in these recordings that will resonate with anybody who's ever travelled on the NY subway; Shiraishi playing off some kind of subconscious, intangible sonic quality of the spaces to draw you almost bodily back there. But although Shiraishi captures specific moments in space and time, these tracks are anything but parochial. This is a communing with the here and now - of being present - at once specific and universal. Tamio Shiraishi opens us up to it all.

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Master and cover design by Oli Barrett

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC

Tracklisting:

1. S1-P11030a - 4.56
2. S2-P11016a - 6.06
3. S3-P11113b - 3.53
4. S4-P11127b - 4.01
5. S5-P20305b - 4.48
6. N6-P20627a - 2.48
7. N7-P20627b - 1.42
8. N8-P20630a - 2.10