Signal To Noise Vol.2 is magnificent. Recorded at YCAM Yamaguchi last March during a tour of Japan by Switzerland's Signal Quintet, Müller, Norbert Möslang, Jason Kahn, Tomas Korber and Christian Weber (and documented openly and honestly by Jason Kahn in these pages ), it finds Korber (guitar, electronics) and Weber (bass) joined by Katsura Yamauchi on sax (alto I think, though it's sometimes hard to tell). His low register moans and breathy hisses compliment Korber's darkly glowing drones and crackles and Weber's lugubrious bass to perfection in a typically introspective, austere pair of (untitled) tracks, on which Korber's impeccable textures draw the horizon line that holds the landscape together, Weber's gloomy thuds (track one) stand like solitary telegraph poles in a flat, brown field and Yamauchi's puffs and wheezes drift

overhead like grey clouds from which recognisable pitches occasionally emerge like pale shafts of light. Yamauchi, a self-taught saxophonist who took up music full time only as recently as 2003 at the age of 50, is even more impressive here than he was on his fine IMJ duo Drache with Michel Doneda. The second track is more (in)tense, with Korber beaming blasts of white noise across the stereo space and Weber opting for sullen tremolos behind the saxophonist's imperturbable rustles and flutters. Korber's static splatters the surface of the music like raindrops smeared across the window of a train moving steadily forward into a vast, empty landscape under a stormy sky.



Dan Warburton