Torso

Big Tip! New Torso!  Gloriously mature and engrossing movements for cello, flute and tape self-released from the Japanese duo on their Ozato label. It’s hard to write anything about Torso’s music without giving the impression that this is polite, nicely buttoned-up contemporary classical dishwater.  It isn’t.  The same constituents are there - bowed cello, shimmering flute, woody upright bass and expensive-sounding reed instruments.  Yet the arrangements take cues from addictive indie-pop structures and the bruised Les Disques du Crépuscule aligned cafe music of the 1980s.  It’s stripped-back, precise, elemental, plush in parts, yet recorded in such minute detail that you can almost visualise sound ripples in the air and overtones colliding.  Think Arthur Russell, Gavin Bryers, Sylvain Kassap, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, but also recent favourites from Mama!Milk, Maheh Shalal Hash Baz, Sternpost.  Sounds this rich, established and otherwise erm.. proper is not something we’re primarily associated with ourselves with, but Torso’s roots are firmly planted in the underground, actually Kenji might also be in a hardcore band.  Not everyday we encounter such accomplished NEW music without having the feeling of being beaten into submission and lectured by a demon headmaster, but Torso inverts (subverts??) the worlds of ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ in a genuinely jaw-dropping and endlessly addictive way.  Already totally fallen for this one. (AllNightFlights)