Despite occasionally being billed as a "retirement," Jim O'Rourke's move to Tokyo in 2005 simply marked another phase in a long collaborative career. Though he continued to engage in his own work (like a 2006 version of Toru Takemitsu's Corona, titled Tokyo Realization, and 2009's resplendent The Visitor), O'Rourke made plenty of new friends, too. One was saxophonist Akira Sakata, formerly of the prog-jazz trio Wha-Ha-Ha (and who also joined O'Rourke and his Osorezan trio for a pair of albums). Another was Boredoms' drummer Yoshimi P-We. Here, the three take the stage at Tokyo's 50-year old jazz institution Pit-Inn, site of several Tokyo-era O'Rourke sessions. O'Rourke is credited with editing, and -- indeed -- the music sometimes sounds layered, with perhaps more than three musicians contributing simultaneously. For the most part, though, the improvisation sounds live and human, Yoshimi on piano, vocals, and drums; Sakata on woodwinds and occasional singing; and O'Rourke on guitar and piano. The music is free, but the trio lingers in abstract grooves, O'Rourke latching into a cool, chunky guitar figure during the disc's 18-minute centerpiece, Hagyou-Hukuwa-Uchi-Hamabe no Uta while Yoshimi moans wordlessly. Eventually, the tune makes its way to a sweet Sakata melody, O'Rourke's treatments humming with textured ambience above Yoshimi's spare drumming. The sweetness is expanded during The Water Pipes Burst in the Cold Weather, where Sakata's impressionistic fluttering, Yoshimi's floating vocalizations, and O'Rourke's supporting guitar swarm together into shifting cloud shapes and blackened thunderheads before breaking into storm and, finally, even sweeter resolution. On the seven-minute coda, Mother and Who?, they go beyond that, even, to a notelessness they are unable to achieve elsewhere. A totally worthwhile, if unexceptional, session. ~ Jesse Jarnow, Rovi

1		Dancing Sea Lions
2		A Vessel on a Foggy Night
3		Hagyou
4		The Water Pipes Burst in the Cold Weather
5		Mother and Who?

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