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Ambient-jazz alchemists Fuubutsushi offer another captivating glimpse into their forthcoming debut live album, Columbia Deluxe, with the release of their second single, “Light in the Annex.” Due out July 11 via American Dreams, the track is a testament to the quartet’s unique synergy, captured during their inaugural and only live performance.
Formed during lockdown as a remote collaboration, Fuubutsushi brings together the formidable talents of Patrick Shiroishi, Chris Jusell, Chaz Prymek, and Matthew Sage. “Light in the Annex” showcases their capacity for improvisation and discovery, a vibrant offshoot from their earlier studio sessions. The band describes this live rendition as “more wiley,” embracing moments of “disorder or tension and release” that encapsulate the live experience – “anticipation, tension, wonder, relief, and joy all mixed together.”
The live setting allowed the musicians to transform their intimately crafted remote compositions into a shared, in-person experience, breathing new life into familiar material.
“The music of Fuubutsushi,” Prymek says, “started as a recording project that turned into deep friendships.” After composing music remotely for their acclaimed cycle of four albums for each of the four seasons, the quartet transformed the music in concert at the Columbia Experimental Music Festival: Shiroishi on saxophones and field recordings, Jusell on violin, Sage on piano and synthesizer, and Prymek on guitar and bass, sharing bells, voice and electronics as a group. “I think we were all pretty nervous about it,” says Shiroishi, “but the audience was with us the entire time and really gave us an incredible amount of energy.” “Part of the thrill,” says Sage, “was that we knew the songs separately, kind of on our own terms. And how it felt to finally turn this music, which we made in such a physically isolated way, to finally come into being in person, for a really receptive audience in a really beautiful room.”
“Now,” says Prymek, “what you hear out of us is that energy spilling back into our music.”
Columbia Deluxe is out July 11th via American Dreams.
Pre-order: https://fuubutsushilive.bandcamp.com/album/columbia-deluxe
