Akihisa Tsuboy x Natsuki Kido duo

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Akihisa Tsuboy x Natsuki Kido duo - Era

Artist:	Akihisa Tsuboy x Natsuki Kido duo
Title:	Era
Label:	Poseidon Records PRF-001
Length(s):	60 minutes
Year(s) of release:	2002
Month of review:	[12/2003]

Line up

Akihisa Tsuboy - violin
Natsuki Kido - guitar

Tracks

1)	Left Window	11.18
2)	006	6.49
3)	Crawler-a	9.32
4)	Ripple	6.42
5)	Seventeen	6.24
6)	Foghone	5.20
7)	New Era Has Come	13.38

Summary

The music

Akihisa is a violin player, Natsuki a guitar player, using only acoustic guitar. Judging from the personnel one would expect this album to lack somewhat in diversity. But as appears with more of the Poseidon releases, the artists manage to stretch past what is expected. We are dished up a couple of interesting guitar and violin duets and duels, which don't for a moment seem to shy from the eclectic, nor from the melodic. The guitar play often appears influenced by crimsonic tendencies, as does the violin appear to be influenced by Ponty. Crawler-a features an especially eclectic section, in which the two instruments duel constantly. Seventeen is more experimental, but still manages to keep enough melody to find a strong balance. As the track continues it seems to drop some of its experimentalism, whilst moving towards a gypsy feel.

Conclusion

Filling a full album with just violin and guitar in a semi jazzy proggy way seems like taking on the world. And in all fairness, these guys do pretty well, but still end up a bit behind Atlas. They manage to keep the attention, or at least more or less so, during the full album. No mean feat. Having said that, I could well imagine that including some more change in an album would increase the chance of a better end result. A great feat including some pretty good material, but still a bit one sided.