Tuesday, October 22nd, ISSUE is pleased to present esteemed Japanese band ASA-CHANG & Junray on their first visit to the U.S. Drawing on material from the project’s entire discography, Asa-Chang performs as a trio with Yoshihiro Goseki (clarinet, flute), Anzu Suhara (violin), and the “Jun-Ray Tronics” soundsystem. The evening also welcomes back sound artist, composer, and 2015 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Lea Bertucci & composer, vocalist, and improviser Amirtha Kidambi performing in a recently formed duo. The project features improvisations for voice processed through idiosyncratic misuse of tape machines and marks the release of their first album, Phase Eclipse, to be released on Astral Spirits.
ASA-CHANG & Junray is the name of the Asa-Chang experience, and comes from the “Jun-Ray Tronics” soundsystem developed by self-taught tabla guru Asa-Chang. Junray (derived from the Japanese word for pilgrimage) has been described as an attempt to summarize musically the entire experience of human emotion, or “kidoairaku.” Based in Tokyo, Asa-Chang has spent much of his professional life touring with multi-million-selling J-pop acts and is regarded as one of Japan’s premiere session percussionists. In the early 2000s, his group was met with worldwide acclaim from the success of debut international album Tsu Gi Ne Pu and the single “Hana,” a revelry of tabla, overlapping vocals, strings, and electronic elaborations that stands as an achievement of early-aughts innovation between pop and avant-garde sensibilities. BBC DJ and tastemaker John Peel had featured the single regularly on his radio show; and, even recently, they have garnered new admirers, with German concert series ReiheM describing the song’s pointed impartiality as in the spirit of Robert Ashley or David Behrman.
The duo of Amirtha Kidambi on vocals and Lea Bertucci on tapes and electronics finds new territory in extending the sonic possibilities of the human voice through electronic manipulation and improvised tactics. Taking a more integrated approach than simply filtering voice through electronic processing, Bertucci manipulates Kidambi’s voice through tactile methods with tape machine, including manual speed control, by physically touching the reels as Kidambi’s live voice is fed through the machine. Kidambi reacts in turn with a vocal arsenal of timbral techniques, creating a literal visceral feedback loop of noise, processed, and polyphonic voices.
Influenced equally by jazz, Carnatic, and western classical vocal techniques, the duo takes a thoroughly freely improvised approach. Their pieces command form through looped repetitions, stark dynamic and textural contrasts, slowly unfolding melodic motifs among harmonic beds and a formidable mind-meld in reactivity between Kidambi and Bertucci. For the astute listener, the explorations may conjure a real-time version of postwar musique concrete or the groundbreaking experiments of live electronics pioneer Pauline Oliveros' tape improvisations. Their forthcoming album Phase Eclipse, featuring studio improvisations along with a full live concert from The Kitchen, will be released on Astral Spirits in November, 2019.
ASA-CHANG & Junray is the band of the Japanese percussionist Asa-Chang, who was the founder and original bandmaster of Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. After leaving that group in 1993, he formed Asa-Chang & Junray in 1997 with programmer, guitarist, and non-performing member Hidehiko Urayama. They were joined in 2000 by tabla player U-zhaan, and the group began staging live performances with Junray-Tronics -- appearing at Fuji Rock Festival for five consecutive years. After their Japan-only 2001 release “Hana,” their second album Tsu Gi Ne Pu, was released in the United Kingdom under The Leaf label, and was selected as the fourth best album of 2002 by The Wire Magazine, and best album by Mojo Magazine and Muzik. Outside these international accolades, the group and “Hana” received extensive coverage in the music media of Australia, the United States, Chile, and other countries around the world. “Hana” was featured on Fabric Live 07, while “Tsuginepu To Ittemita” was included on a The Wire Tapper CD. In 2013, "Hana" was re-done for the soundtrack to the anime Aku no Hana (lit. Flowers of Evil), an adaptation of the manga of the same name. The group has often collaborated with contemporary dancers in a music videos; and, in 2009 with a staging of “Aoiro Theater” featuring their music with dance at Setagaya Public Theatre. In 2010, Asa-Chang made a fresh start as a solo unit and has since remained active in creative forms that go beyond established ideas of music. In 2012, they unveiled the opus “NEW Aoiro Theater” at Kyoto Experiment 2012 with the addition of Yoshihiro Goseki and Anzu Suhara as members.
Lea Bertucci is a composer, performer and sound designer whose work describes relationships between acoustic phenomena and biological resonance. In addition to her instrumental practice with woodwind instruments, she often incorporates multi-channel speaker arrays, electroacoustic feedback, extended instrumental technique and tape collage. In recent years, her projects have expended toward site-responsive and site-specific sonic investigations of architecture. Deeply experimental, her work is unafraid to subvert musical expectation. Her discography includes a number of solo and collaborative releases on independent labels and in 2018, she released the critically acclaimed Metal Aether on NNA tapes. Lea is co-editor of the multi-volume artists book The Tonebook, a survey of graphic scores by contemporary composers, published on Inpatient Press. As a sound designer, Lea has collaborated with dance and theater companies including Big! Dance Theater, Pig Iron Theater, Piehole!, and Mallory Catlett (Restless NYC). Her collaborations extend to other chamber-noise projects, including a recently formed duo with vocalist Amirtha Kidambi. As a solo artist, she has performed extensively across the US and Europe with presenters such as MoMA PS1, Blank Forms, Pioneer Works, The Kitchen, Roulette, The Walker Museum, Caramoor, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, Sound of Stockholm Festival, and Unsound Festival, Krakow. She is a 2016 MacDowell Fellow in composition and a 2015 ISSUE Project Room Artist-in-Residence. In 2018, she received a commission from the American Composers’ Forum for a new percussion trio as well as a brass octet commissioned by the Levy Gorvy Gallery in New York.
Amirtha Kidambi is a vocalist, composer, improviser, activist and scholar invested in the creation and performance of subversive music, from free improvisation and avant-jazz, to experimental bands and new music. As a bandleader, she is the creative force behind Elder Ones, featuring rising New York artists Matt Nelson, Nick Dunston and Max Jaffe. Elder Ones’ albums “Holy Science” and “From Untruth” released on Northern Spy have received critical praise from the New York Times, Downbeat Magazine, Pitchfork and international press including Wire Magazine, Music Magazine Japan and Jazzwise. In 2018, Kidambi premiered solo improvisatory work and a debut of her improvising vocal quintet Lines of Light, featuring Emilie Lesbros Jean-Carla Rodea, Anais Maviel and Charmaine Lee, as the 2018 Artist-in-Residence at Roulette. Kidambi is a key collaborator in Mary Halvorson's latest quintet Code Girl, a duo with Darius Jones setting the poetry of Sun Ra, regular collaborations with William Parker and is a longtime member of Charlie Looker's Renaissance influenced avant-folk quartet Seaven Teares. As an improviser, she has played with New York luminaries including Matana Roberts, Tyshawn Sorey, Maria Grand, Brandon Lopez, Ingrid Laubrock, Ava Mendoza, Fay Victor, Trevor Dunn, Ben Vida, Tyondai Braxton and Shahzad Ismaily. Kidambi worked closely with composer Robert Ashley until the end of his life, premiering his final opera CRASH and a reboot of Improvement: Don Leaves Linda and had the honor of working with the late composer/pianist Muhal Richard Abrams for the premiere of “Dialogue Social.” Kidambi has performed and presented her music in the U.S. and internationally at Carnegie Hall, The Kitchen, Whitney Museum, EMPAC, Wexner Center, Andy Warhol Museum, Berlin Jazzfest, Big Ears Festival, Borderline Festival in Athens and various DIY/punk spaces. Kidambi has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, Asian Cultural Council and Artist Residencies, Residency at Bucareli 69 in Mexico City and commissions at EMPAC and Roulette.
