Album Details

• Artist: Jennifer Gentle And Kawabata Makoto
• Album: The Wrong Cage
• Label: A Silent Place
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2008-04-24

Four songs with a silent break just before the last, live, one, "The Wrong Cage" explores ambient and noise themes with a rough edge, but also with an ear for the sublime that cuts deeper than usual such fare. Most of the songs are over ten minutes, but only the somewhat ponderous "couple in bed by a green flashing light" feels like it. There is power and haunting pause on all tracks, as befits a collaboration between Gentle and Kawabata.

Makoto Kawabata, as leader of Acid Mothers Temple, among other projects, seems like he appears on a hundred records a year. For such a pace, he rarely seems to run out of ideas. His guitar work here, and his sarongi solo on "Man from Mu," are stunning bursts of dirty majestic riffing we have come to expect. Jennifer Gentle is a pop band not afraid to get real gone, who respond well to Kawabata's presence. As well they should; he not only leads them into often unhinged waters, but the four tracks here are Jennifer Gentle originals, here reworked and wrung out rightly.

The band's droning beats and slicing guitar work play into Kawabata's hands on "Bring Them," which de-volves (evolves?) into a celestial freakout jam full of enlightenment and wah-wah.

This collaboration grew out of a 2002 Italian tour during which the band and Kawabata shared a bill and, judging from the frenzied explorations recorded here, they maybe shared more than that.

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