Toshinori Kondo & IMA - Brain War (1991)

Trumpeter Toshinori Kondo has achieved the most impressive blend of yesterday and tomorrow. Since his decision to apply his study of computer technology to culture in the early 70s, he has worked on diverse projects. Kondo’s work as a film and theater actor, author, and performance organizer have complemented each other to create a very personal mosaic of expression, whose pivot point has always been his music. In 1978 he went to New York, partly out of curiosity and partly to make international contacts, and stayed for five years. He quickly got into the music scene there and played with Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell, John Zorn, Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Firth, and others. He has become just as good friends with these musicians as with the German saxophone player, Peter Brötzmann, whom he visits in Wuppertal once a year to live out his free-jazz ambitions in Brötzmann’s “März” band. America’s east coast metropolis bored Kondo more quickly than expected. “Lots of people say that New York is the center of modern music, but they’re so terribly intellectual and don’t have any vitality. I wanted to get back to Tokyo so badly back then, though everybody said I was crazy on that score.“ Once back home, Kondo’s restlessness came to an end with the founding of his own band, International Music Activities, (IMA). He was able to create the sounds which represented his view of what innovative music should be, together with young musicians who were willing to completely distance themselves from traditional tonal patterns. Warped guitars, hectic electronic percussion, odd futuristic computer sounds, and everyday noises were joined together to create a threatening but danceable picture of modern life in the big city. In this scenario, Kondo’s trumpet takes on the role of human feelings; sometimes gentle and then challenging again or shrilly aggressive. The melodies that can be heard originate in Toshinori Kondo’s enthusiasm for traditional Japanese music, but he wants to go back much farther than the roots. “When a child is born it screams and this scream sounds the same all over the world. That’s what I mean by ethnic origins, and I want to find my way back there with my music.” To find one’s self is also one of the subliminal challenges expressed in Brain War, Kondo & IMA’s fifth album. “No one can survive without imagination, and music cannot be freed without the power of imagination, either. But in today’s world, from birth on, they do everything to hinder personal development. Our existence is influenced by external things like work and consumption, and I hardly think that a worker who has to sell his time in order to survive is particularly happy doing it. The fight for self-fulfillment begins in our minds.“ ~ kurt gerland, jaro.de