Mitsuru Tabata & Jun Morita - Live Critique of Judgement Mitsuru Tabata & Jun Morita

This session was performed with absolutely no prior discussion or planning whatsoever; it was entirely improvised in the moment
As someone who plays both guitar and bass, Tabata found improvising with Morita especially engaging because, in sessions with fellow string players, he usually had a sense of what they might play next. Morita's keyboard and live electronics, however, produced sounds that were completely unpredictable. Morita, for his part, describes Mitsuru Tabata as a guitarist with exceptional reflexes, precise musical direction, and a strong improvisational instinct. Morita goes on to praise Tabata's "dynamic vision" for sound itself, possessing a vast vocabulary grounded in wide- ranging listening experience, and an exceptional sensitivity to rapidly changing sound.

During this performance, Morita set up drum patterns on his modular system while incorporating unusual glitch noise effects, beginning to gradually repeat rhythms from the second piece onward in order to create space for Tabata's guitar to unfold. Tabata, meanwhile, deliberately avoided overly complicated interpretations, cultivating an environment in which Morita could easily intervene. Perhaps because of this, listeners may notice a pervasive acoustic openness.

Although this recording documents only a duo performance, listeners might fruitfully hear it while recalling, somewhere in the distance, musical collectives such as Chicago's AACM, the early German group Amon Duouol, or Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra in the UK. Tabata's psychedelic guitar effects are characteristically present as always, yet once Morita's rhythms enter, the music sometimes sounds to me like a form of krautrock collapsing in on itself.

Packaged in a gatefold digisleeve with an obi strip and risograph-printed insert.

Guitar : Mitsuru Tabata
Electronics, Mastering : Jun Morita
Recorded live at Bonobo, Tokyo, on June 20, 2021. Fully improvised performance with no overdubbing

Mitsuru Tabata began his musical career in 1982. Since then, he has played a key role in many of Japan's most influential underground and experimental groups, including Noizunzuri, BOREDOMS, Leningrad Blues Machine, YBO2, ZENI GEVA, Acid Mothers Temple, and Gaseneta, as well as projects related to tributes to The Stalin centered around Jun Inui. Alongside his work in these seminal bands, he has toured internationally, participated in numerous collaborative sessions, and released a series of home-recorded solo albums on labels in Japan and abroad. He is currently active in several groups, including Missing Heads, a trio with Tatsuya Yoshida and Kazuhide Yamaji, as well as lemonsours and RQRQ.

Jun Morita is an electronic musician and DJ. He has released solo works through labels such as fonon, run by Kaoru Sato (EP-4) and also released collaborative works with So- si Suzuki and Keiji Haino on Les Disques d'Ailleurs. He reissued Michio Kadotani's works via his own independent label << Wine and Dine >>. He has Performed a 24-hour live set on a program by theater artist Masahiko Akuta. He was part of the band TACO, led by Harumi Yamazaki, as well as GRAVESTYLE with Naohiro Ukawa (Dommune), and the band-format project Omega f2;k.