There is no disputing that Eiko Ishibashi is an experimental musician. Her compositions span electronic manipulations, found sounds, recitations of train stations. But she has also toyed with something akin to pop music, songs that are vaguely catchy and you could sing along to. Her set at Alice with Joe Talia, however, throws all conventional song structures out the window.
She does not sing over the course of the evening. Instead she eschews beginnings and endings, creating one long, fluid movement of echoing sounds. In a predominantly electronic set, Ishibashi brings in piano and flute. The staccato piano is usually backed by Talia’s cascading percussion while her flute lines are looped and manipulated, segueing from one suggestion of song to another. The organic/electronic elements of the set twist around one another until they are almost indistinguishable; the pitch shifting of the flute to make it sound like a French horn is as electronic as the weedy, pointedly machine-like sounds, but the flute sample feels much less digitized.
Towards the end of the set, Talia brings in a soft thudding percussion that sounds at first like thunder but later is unmistakably a muffled gunfire. The mood instantly shifts from soothing to sinister, strangely muted but still very aggressive. But as suddenly as it’s faded in, it’s faded out again, leaving only the sentiment behind.
While we went into the gig expecting to hear more familiar selections from Ishibashi’s catalogue, there’s no denying that the set did justice to her talents and creativity. So no, this isn’t necessarily what we were expecting from the evening. But it can be wonderful to be surprised.
