Nakatani/Nanna/Schoofs/Woods – s/t
8.11.17 by Mike Haley
The ad-lib ensemble of Tatsuya Nakatani, Peter Woods, Jason Nanna, and Amanda Schoofs approach free music on their self-titled cassette as if they were just pulled over by a small town cop while on mushrooms. Eyes wide, toes clenched into anxious feet-fists, Woods barely moves a muscle, showing restraint rarely seen on his FTAM label. Fearing that he and his bass will both end up in some podunk cell, munching on bologna and wet white bread sandwiches for weeks, he wisely stays away from playing any bass face inducing tunes. The occasional pluck/scratch/bump of his instrument could best be chalked up to nerves. Who can blame him? The bass player always gets the short end of the stick in these situations. Meanwhile, Shoofs is too far gone into her zone to be bothered with maintaining even a facade of normalcy. From shotgun her pupils gawk through the window at the knock off Rosco P. Coltrane on the other side – not just the other side of the window, but the other side of a reality – as she spits out poetry in dead languages, at times operatic, but always concerning and with a beautiful range. There is a strong possibility that Tatsuya Nakatani, the Japanese based percussionist with a seemingly endless catalog of sound, was originally in the now vacant driver seat of the car, but pursued solace in the trunk, shuffling an oil pan, tire iron, and loose lug nuts to make space. Rosco can hear the metal-on-metal scuffle plain as day, but there are more pressing issues at hand. For instance, Mr. Nanna. Like a toddler Nanna can’t keep his hands to himself, fiddling with the fuse box, stereo dials, and any knob, switch, or slider he can get his sugary hands on. His electronics, along with those provided by Amanda, fizzle, gelling together the unfettered ambient malaise as he thinks to himself “You’re doing great. Just keep fucking with these turn signals. You’re not about to melt. This cop doesn’t think you are going to melt.” None of that is the case though. Nanna is melting, cooking the dashboard into a goo with him. Good news: they kill the cop with brainwaves and continue their 9 mph commute down whatever random road they are on.
In reality the quartet’s drive was a spontaneous jam session in Milwaukee. Culled from that unscripted meeting are 16 bite-sized chunks of abstract, free jazzish beauty averaging about two minutes a shot. And it was all CAUGHT ON TAPE and released in an edition of 75 by the always impressive Full Spectrum. You can find one here.