Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek

Jan Jelinek has maintained a soft jazz centre since his earliest recordings, notably Loop-finding-jazz-records from 2001 on ~Scape. With Berlin-based Japanese vibraphone experimentalist Fujita, he has found a real-time foil that obviously exceeds the possibilities of any sample bank. Five of the six pieces were captured by microphones that also catalogued ambient events occurring during the performances. On the more intense pieces, Fujita's vibraphone rings out in clusters of tone that appear calculated to collide with Jelinek's swirling electronics. On the quieter, more minimalist tracks like "I'll Change Your Life" and "IA_AI," the duo improvise in a vaguely sinister film noir mode of acoustic echoes and sweeps across the digital spectrum. Only on "Stripped to RM" does the acoustic and electronic meld, as Jelinek turns Fujita's tintinnabulations into a now-familiar arrangement of stuttering clicks and cuts. It's a record that proves that the new and old schools of jazz can still recombine in exciting new ways.