Improvised Music from Japan

Liner Notes of the CD Meeting at Off Site Vol. 1

At the foot of Shinjuku's skyscrapers remains a patch of old wooden houses. Off Site is a small gallery/performance space created through the modification and renovation of one of these houses. This CD is a collection of recordings from the monthly Off Site improvisation gathering organized by Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Taku Sugimoto (who resigned from the project and became an occasional guest in 2001). The sound in these performances is often so feeble that it welcomes into the music noises from outside, such as the whistle of a tofu vendor and the wooden clappers of people calling "Beware of fire" as they walk through the neighborhood. All this has happened at the very end of a maze of narrow streets in the center of Tokyo.

written by Toshimaru Nakamura