Ground Zero - Plays Standards

  by Andrew Carver

published: 12 / 4 / 2002

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Ground-Zero’s 'Plays Standards' is where the fascination of main man Otomo Yoshihide  with free jazz, soundtracks and song meets, usually explosively, with strange instrumentation. As you might guess from the title, this is a covers album, a weird melange of free jazz, golden oldies, Japanese TV themes and pop songs. This album has a great sense of humour, but it’s not a joke or a novelty. The first track sets the pattern: Chilean folk singer Victor Jara’s 'El Derecho De Vivir en Paz' is merged with a Japanese pop music track by Shinoda Masami’s Compostera, 'Shinoshin 3/4'— this last bit of information is gleaned from the informative liner notes, where Otomo explains, sometimes obliquely, what led him to cover each track. It starts with a crackling needle, backward music, and Kikuchi Naruyoshi’s saxophone  playing the melody of Jara’s tune over a background of rocking guitar, bass and a pair of drummers. Then everything drops out but the bass and hand-drum, and over this background Tanaka Yumiko plays shamisen and sings in a plaintive song-speak before really letting her pipes get to work. Her interlude has a peculiarly archaic feel. The other musicians come back in, with Uchihashi Kazuhisa playing some particularly tasty guitar, Kikuchi returns to the melody line, and the song races to its conclusion, the jarring halt of a needle scratch. Ground-Zero has an eight person lineup. In addition to those mentioned above Matsubara Sachiko provides sampler, Nasuno Mitsuru plays bass, and separate drums kits are manned by Uemara Masahiro and Yoshigaki Yasuhiro. This means there is frequently a lot going on, but clear production keeps things from getting muddy. The second track doesn’t sound anything like the first. There’s rattling, beeping clanging, percolating, some distant steel drum. Things start to congeal over a creeping, rippling bassline. Kooky and spooky. Apparently, this is a cover of the theme song to a Japanese TV show called 'Ultra Q', which judging from this version involved secret agents trapped in a combination haunted house, mad scientist’s lair and a theremin factory. Then there’s their cover of the Gene Raskin chestnut 'Those Were The Days.' According to the liners, this is a popular song in Japan, much-recorded by performers working the nostalgia angle. Ground-Zero’s version samples a version played by Sergy Kuryokhin and Keshavan Maslak (who plays a “altered, miniature guitar” that sounds much like a balalaika — Kuryokhin plays piano). Over this Ground-Zero have added wiggy sax, screams, laughter, car noises, cymbals, the odd giggle and the sound of a piano-busting kung-fu battle which finally devolves into total chaos. Remember those cowboy movies where the piano player tinkles on, regardless of the roughnecks swinging from the chandelier and pummelling each other with the furniture? This is it, but the bar’s in Novgorod instead of Nevada. Samba star Nelson Cavaquinho gets the Ground-Zero (mis)treatment next. But he’s mostly a ghostly presence, snippets of his original tune appearing in the gaps of a remarkably focussed (for Ground-Zero anyway) version of 'Folhas Secas.' Track four is another merging, between Omoide Hatoba’s 'Japan Dissolution', which sounds a bit like 'Give Peace a Chance', suddenly giving way to a bonkers version of John Philip Souza’s “Washington Post March', performed with phone ringing, squeaky toys etc, and then coming in on top again. Next up, a track which wouldn't be out of place on a Keiji Haino album — it’s a cover of Abe Kaoru, the Japanese saxophonist who famously played in highway underpasses so he could compete with the traffic noise. On this track, it’s only Otomo and Uchihashi engaged in all-out shred’n’scream guitar torture. Then there’s their version of the Fred Frith-Bill Laswell-Frederick Maher tune, a thump, a saxophone lick, then the sound of a door creaking slowly open. A bit more of a creaking door, then the whole crew comes crashing in with some propulsive jazz-rock, then back again. Their cover of' 'Where are the Police' written by free-jazzers Misha Mengelberg and Steve Beresford, originally performed by improv guitar great Derek Bailey. Ground Zero recorded their version in the bathroom — one of the “musical instruments” Otomo is credited with is bathwater; he also employs a toothbrush (sounds just like you’d think it does), toys (rubber ducky, surely?) his own body, various flute-like instruments along with his usual turntable — not, I hope, all at the same time. This may be the only track where a gloriously silly idea doesn’t work in the execution. The melancholy 'Miagetegoran, Yoru no Hoshi wo' begins with minor key saxophone over frenetic percussion, then is given a further push by driving bass and magnificently sustained guitar — synthetic squiggles that could have come right out of an Acid Mother’s Temple album break up the sonic texture. The next song is a spacious Japanese folk song, '"Yume no Hansyu', originally performed by Novo Tono, another group Otomo belongs to. It proceeds at a stately pace, with the odd drum roll and a burst of pipe organ at the end. Nice and low key. The next track sounds like another Japanese folk song, primarily because of the predominance of Tanaka’s shamisen at the beginning, but in fact it’s Berthold Brecht and Johannes Hanns Eisler’s'Die Papple from Karlsplatz', the defining melody coming as usual from Kikuchi’s saxophone. Bringing up the rear is the combination of the theme song from the Hong Kong action classic 'A Better Tomorrow' by Joseph Koo and Burt Bacharach’s 'I Say A Little Prayer.' It’s alternately tense and swinging. Some people will undoubtedly find this album nonsensical, but anyone with a taste for the unusual will find it brilliant and most worthy of repeat listening.

Track Listing:-

1 El Derecho de Vivir en Paz + Shinoshin 3/4
2 Ultra Q
3 Those Were the Days
4 Folhas Secas
5 Washington Post March + Japan Dissolution
6 Akashia No Ame Ga Yamu Toki
7 Bones
8 Where Is the Police? + The Bath of Surprise
9 Miagetegoran, Yoru No Hoshi Wo
10 Yume No Hansyu
11 Die Pappel Vom Karlsplatz
12 A Better Tomorrow + I Say a Little Prayer

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