I.S.O.

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I.S.O. engages in electroacoustic improvisation, both on the festival circuit and in-studio, but de-emphasizes instrumental identity and all related elements of musical performance. Instead, Ichiraku Yoshimitsu, Sachiko M., and Otomo Yoshihide appear to be "in search of" legitimately new ground. They explore, discover, and map I.S.O.'s extemporized terrain as a single mind, their experimentation in the realm of "post-sampling" music gaining in confidence and definition with each subsequent convening of I.S.O. The trio's third album sees release (in a handsome, silver/gray gatefold package) via the Alcohol label, present concern of the mysterious L. Voag. Homosexuals frontman and Cheltenham Milk-man Voag also recorded, mixed, and mastered this set at his London studio. But Voag's intervention must have been minimal, despite his triple-threat credit, as the I.S.O. aesthetic allows for neither overdubs nor postproduction edits. Prying apart and attributing the music's constituent sounds is therefore something of a blind man's bluff. Sachiko M.'s high-pitched signature - sine whine-wave®-whinny-whoop-and-wobble milked from the empty memory banks of a sampler - fuses with the other sounds, forging something much less ascribable. Yoshimitsu plays with homemade electronic sound generators, here contributing to I.S.O.'s quiet but dynamic flow of drone, hum, pattering pulses, bubbles, and binary chirps. He must also be responsible for his share of the scattered sound-packets plummeting, freezing, and imploding at unpredictable intervals within I.S.O.'s electro-acoustic space. Yoshihide's controlled antics with discs and vinyl provide further textural cement for I.S.O.'s musique concrete, supporting the trio's constructive ambitions. Thankfully, Yoshihide has retained some of his impish Ground Zero twinkle. In I.S.O., he also manifests a more destructive side - the counter-effect of his turntablist maneuvers - and leaves tiny tooth-marks, snags, and holes in the trio's sparse, spaciously minded stratifications. The improv forum tends to foster excess, but only the last (and strongest) of the disc's four improvisations crosses the 15-minute mark. I.S.O.'s brevity certainly promotes the wealth of imagination on display and the small-ensemble ingenuity of these three supremely sensitive players. An exemplary artifact of challenging and truly "new" music.