Sat Oct 2, Neumo's, 8 pm, $15 adv.
DJ Krush's latest CD, Jaku, concludes a trilogy that was activated by 2001's Zen (and followed up with 2003's The Message at the Depth). What distinguishes this group from the Japanese turntablist/producer's other work (which can be classified as straight to abstract hiphop) is that it completes an experiment that was initiated by Japanese pop legend Ryuichi Sakamoto on Beauty (1992). In an effort to produce music that expressed the emerging international spirit of the times (late '80s, early '90s), Sakamoto blended African rhythms, Indian melodies, and traditional Japanese vocals with rock.
However, Beauty had some problems, mostly that it felt incomplete. The ideas were all there but it seemed the means to fully realize them were not. If Sakamoto had had the musical resources that exist today, he would have made what we now hear on Krush's Jaku. Like Beauty, much of the music in Jaku has dense layers of Japanese instruments, sounds, and vocals. Unlike Beauty, the Japanese elements, which are blended with different musical forms from around the world (reggae, film scores, electro, hiphop), are so thoroughly fused and integrated that they sound organic.
The music on Jaku is the most dramatic and organic of Krush's trilogy. It has fewer guest rappers (only Aesop Rock and Mr. Lif) and turntablists, and more musicians, who effortlessly conform to Krush's overall aesthetic, which is sorrowful and ghostly. In the '80s, Krush made hiphop; in the '90s, he made abstract hiphop; now he makes music that is at once international and Japanese.
