Sharing the bill with BLUE (Bruford & Levin with David Torn and Chris Botti), P2 are on savage form on their first gig in Japan. Following the stop-start tension raising game of Live Groove, they settle into a mid-paced chug which enables Gunn to set the place on fire with some high velocity soloing and then with some choppy bass work on House.
With any kind of improvisation there’s always an unexpected element which can either make or break a piece. Light_X_chayn_jiz builds up beautifully as washes of strings and spacey lines provide a luminous pathway though the sudden appearance of a jokey-sounding sitar-guitar throws the mood completely sideways.
Thrush continues to evolve though once again it’s Fripp who is the principal soloist rather than Gunn. The pan-pipe patch fest that is Happy Hour On Zarg struggles to find its place but Trey turns in some fantastically acerbic lines that’ll put hairs on yer chest.The potency of the first couple of numbers is restored in the rousing set closer, Contrary ConstruKction. The simultaneously ascending/descending themes from Fripp and Gunn seem to have found the form that it would adopt at subsequent forms. Inadvertently pressing the sitar-guitar patch for a second, Fripp quickly recovers and locks into his customary end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it doom tone. Great stuff.
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