Needle Drops: From Studio to Satoko Fujii

This week: short but sweet and with an international flair.

I'm afraid I've become distracted from writing this intro because the Eno documentary is currently streaming as part of a 24-hour event. I've already seen this movie in the theater, but, as you may have heard, it's different each time. I wanted to avoid getting sucked in, but suddenly new-to-me footage of Brian getting snippy over lyrics with John Cale appeared. Now, I'm late with this post and fighting the temptation to spend my day looking for more moments that I haven't seen yet.

You probably already heard that the Eno documentary is fantastic. So that's our first recommendation—see it at a theater near you or look out for a future streaming event. The director, Gary Hustwit, has an email newsletter, and subscribing to it should probably keep you abreast of streaming opportunities.

Now, on with the music!

Brueder Selke & Midori Hirano - Split Scale

The Selke brothers and Midori Hirano bring their shared classical roots to Split Scale, their first album together on Thrill Jockey Records. The eight tracks follow a straightforward concept—each piece builds from a note in the Western scale, moving from A through G and back to A. However, the execution reveals layers of nuance as the Berlin-based composer team combines their orchestral training with electronic experimentation.

The album grew through a back-and-forth between Hirano and the Selkes, Sebastian and Daniel. Each artist began half the compositions before passing them along, creating musical conversations through the exchange. Sebastian's cello mingles with Daniel's piano while Hirano's electronic elements weave throughout. The listeners hear this blend immediately on the opener "A," where Hirano's repeating patterns meet the brothers' cello and synth textures. The album closes with "AA," as electronic chords rise and eventually scatter into open space. Both artists come to this project with deep musical backgrounds - the Selke brothers direct the Schaffrath Chamber Orchestra and run Q3Ambientfest, while Hirano composes for film, including recent work on "Tokito" and a Premier League documentary. A lot is lurking in the haunting stillness of this record. (LP)

Studio - West Coast

After the seemingly rampant genre rigidity of ‘90s club and electronic music, musicians began to fuse and frolic between sounds and into influences outside of determined scenes. In its many stripes, disco formed a prominent idea but became applied to dancier interpretations found in vintage afro-beat, Krautrock, and post-punk. The lazy critic often pigeonholed this newfound stew into an undefinable category called “Balearic” (guilty as charged). But these blurrified musical directions portended a more genre-agnostic future, where an ‘all the music at your fingertips’ atmosphere brought influence from every possible position.

In this regard, you could say that Studio were slightly ahead of their time. Swedish musicians Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hägg were a pair of art schoolers who caused a quiet uproar in mid-2000s blog-land with their bright and dubby guitar-splashed dance music. The internet-unfriendly name Studio was chosen, and label names Service and INF (Information) further conjured a spiritual avenue down the street from Factory Records. The self-released album West Coast was the culmination. Rare and intentionally obscure, the album managed to find itself on the decks of the era’s hipster DJs (guilty as charged) and near the top of a few mainstream best-of-2007 album lists. However, the exclusive nature of Studio’s output meant, aside from a limited reissue or two, that West Coast has been unavailable outside illicit YouTube streams for many years.

Ghostly International to the rescue. Today sees the appearance of a complete, remastered, and expanded version of Studio’s West Coast album on streaming, Bandcamp, and multiple physical formats (including, um, minidisc). And it’s stunning how contemporary this album sounds despite its easily identifiable influences from the past (The Cure, Arthur Russell, Chas Jankel, Idjut Boys …). The vocals are fun but unassuming—the instrumental passages and sustained textures truly shine. Take special note of “Life’s a Beach," which, after a short pause, transforms from a swirl of bass and phased guitar to an even more swirly and echoed-out intervention. The song suddenly sounds like Faze Action recording for ECM. (Side note: there’s a wicked Todd Terje remix that’s sadly not included here.)

West Coast is one of those out-of-time albums that’ll keep popping up decade after decade. It’s pleasingly cohesive, even with the bounty of bonus tracks the Ghostly edition includes, and somehow escapes the blend of nostalgia that dates other ‘from the vault’ obscurity rescues. I wouldn’t be surprised if first-time listeners check online for the latest tour dates and band updates, hoping to awash themselves in additional output from this 'new' Studio duo. Alas—though the two members continue to music-make, Studio, as an active project, is a done deal. We’re left with the combined sound of their influences, forever melted together to uniquely influence Studio’s own listeners. (MD)

Natsuki Tamura and Keiji Haino - What happened there?

Natsuki Tamura and Keiji Haino's debut recording, What happened there?, documents their concert at Tokyo's Aremo Koremo festival. The two artists met for the first time on stage, bringing their backgrounds in free jazz, avant-rock, and raw experimentation—and living them in real time.

The music moves from stark opposites to moments of union—Tamura uses kitchen tools and toys alongside his trumpet while Haino responds with guitar work and vocals. Their shared grounding in folk music from various cultures shapes the sound, though each maintains his own artistic voice. The concert flows between quiet, melodic sections and fierce sonic outbursts. As Tamura says of using everyday objects: "I use things like banging on a wok or a toy because I want that sound in that moment. It's not silly, it's very serious."

Each musician's past work informs this meeting. Tamura leads Gato Libre and often plays with pianist (and Spotlight On alum) Satoko Fujii. Haino founded the group Fushitsusha and has worked with Peter Brötzmann and John Zorn. This is original, challenging stuff but rewarding to open ears and minds. (LP)

Satoko Fujii - Altitude 1100 Meters

And here we are again, with pianist-composer Satoko Fujii, whose album Altitude 1100 Meters is her first recording with a string ensemble in her three-decade career. The five-part suite, performed by her new group GEN (meaning "string" in Japanese), captures, according to the album notes, Fujii's response to the atmospheric qualities she observed while staying in Nagano's mountain highlands.

The album features violinists Yuriko Mukoujima and Ayako Kato, violist Atsuko Hatano, bassist Hiroshi Yoshino, and drummer Akira Horikoshi alongside Fujii's piano. The music moves from misty morning stillness to stormy afternoon intensity through sophisticated string textures and tight improvisations. Yoshino's bass drones and swooping violin lines open "Morning Haze," while "Early Afternoon" builds through rhythmic plucked notes. The longest piece, "Light Rain," showcases Fujii's prepared piano explorations woven with Mukoujima's lyrical violin solos. Her writing brings out the strings' natural expressiveness through microtonal bends and timbral variations impossible on piano.

This release adds a new dimension to Fujii's body of work, which includes collaborations with artists like Mark Dresser and Jim Black, her ongoing duo with the above-mentioned trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, and compositions for various jazz orchestras. (LP)