Recording: Tatsuya Nakatani

Artist: Tatsuya Nakatani

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Burdock Music Hall (Somewhere There Presents), June 29, 2016.

Tatsuya Nakatani - [excerpt 1] (gong drone)

Tatsuya Nakatani - [excerpt 2]

Osaka-via-Pennsylvania percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani was in town last year, playing the Intersection Festival at Yonge-Dundas Square. Returning to the cozy Burdock could hardly have been more different than a concrete canyon, but there was a similar vibe running through both sets. Inside, the music was definitely more intense — and this was a close-up experience, with Nakatani leading things off by inviting the crowd to move right in to surround him, to soak in the vibrations from as close as possible. That also gave a feeling of more intense listening than in the somewhat random surroundings at YDS, with many in the crowd here closing their eyes and leaning in to focus of the variations of his sounds. A long segment on his orchestral gongs was utterly gorgeous, carefully-modulated ambient sounds that on playback could easily be mistaken for a synthesizer. As he moved to his kit, there was a wide range of tactics, both gentle and loud, that created a huge range of sonic opportunities. Existing so specifically in three-dimensional space, this doesn't render particularly well as a recording — there were some magical moments where the overtones would cause sympathetic vibrations in implements several feet away, creating an almost mystical ghost-energy in the room.