Ultra Living - Transgression
(After Hours)
Bisect a straight line between the Tied & Tickled Trio in Germany
and UNKLE in England and somehow you end up right in the middle of
downtown Tokyo. Brought to American ears by members of The Dylan
Group, Ultra Living are the brothers Nonaka from Tokyo who take the
word "fusion" to the extreme on their second album Transgression
covering everything from spastic beat-driven electronica to fakejazz
to Ornette Coleman covers to vocal pop to pure hip-hop. It is a
truly disparate mixture, no doubt, but somehow it all works together,
sounding like a great compilation, probably not much different than
the one they include with the Ultra Living magazine the Nonakas publish.
The album starts off with a collaboration between the band and members
of The Dylan Group featuring that band's trademark vibes-based melodies.
Unlike The Dylan Group, though, "Entwurf" includes English vocals by Ian
Simmonds which is a calming influence on the song, smoothing out the
sometimes frantic vibes and blurts of saxophone and beats that pop up in the
background.
The next two songs, "Absurdly Pedantic" and "Birds Must be Eliminated,"
are based around vocal samples of odd phrases that are bent and twisted
to create another instrument in the songs. The cut and pasted fragments of
these phrases are blended in with short melodies, tones, beats, and many other
types of noises to create a cloud of sounds. The effect
is a dense, jittery frenzy, but the songs are constructed to have a
forward moving momentum that keeps the listener from getting lost or
dizzy from that whirling cloud that surrounds him.
Several songs feature very smooth jazz-style vocals that give the songs
a strong pop facade over the frenzy of beats beneath; two highlights of this
feature singing by Kyoko Brown: "Color-Perspective" and "Immaterial."
"Immaterial" is based around a very fast break beat featuring samples of
a rapper (cut up so small the listener hears only syllables), a human beat
box, and keyboard and saxophone bursts that make the song somewhat like
a James Bond soundtrack, over the top of which is Brown's sultry cooing
vocals. "Color-Perspective" uses a stronger melody from the piano along
with skronky bursts of saxophone and bird sounds to create the ultimate
new millennium Blaxpoitation movie hero's theme song... well, okay, maybe
it's not that funky, but it does have a swagger to it that does
seem to lend itself to strutting down city streets and fighting the man.
Ultra Living's Transgression is all over the place, but it manages to
stay cohesive and, more importantly, enjoyable. The record is very
busy with all the beats and sampled instruments the pop up, but the songs
are very well constructed--it is dense but not overloaded. With all these
styles that pop up in the music, it makes the record seem like an interesting
snapshot of music and culture in Tokyo (or, at least, these two brothers).
However, if that is the case, why is all of the singing is in English?
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