From: "Arthur Gadney" <a_gadney@hotmail.com>

Still nobody manged to pick up Otomo Yoshihide, Bill Laswell & Yasuhiro Yoshigaki: "Soup"? I'm very curious for some comments on it.

It sucks. Otomo was over here in Seoul last week playing a few gigs and I asked him about it. He didn't say anything directly, but I could tell both from the comments from him and Sachiko M that Otomo wasn't happy about it. So he didn't say it. I didn't say it. But clearly this was a disappointment for at least one of the artists associated with it. Why this project came to be, I don't know. Laswell's ambient bass noodlings don't work well with an improviser like Otomo (personally, my favorite in the world today). Laswell does best in his ethno-electronica mode. He seems to have lost his chops as an improviser, though some would argue he didn't have much to begin with. I think Painkiller/Massacre were pretty successful though. But Otomo and Laswell, I'm sorry to say, don't go well together. They don't have a comparable aesthetic. Why this project ever happened, I have no idea whatsoever. Avoid this CD. Buy the new Erstwhile with Otomo, Sachiko and Nakamura instead. It looks much more promising. -- http://deterritory.blogspot.com/ -- http://deterritorialized-music.blogspot.com/