Tashi Wada & Yoshi Wada Frkwys Volume 14 - Nue

Composer Tashi Wada has performed for years with his father Yoshi Wada-artist,
composer, and early member of the Fluxus movement. However, they have rarely
appeared together in studio settings. Nue, the fourteenth entry in RVNG Intl.'s
intergenerational FRKWYS series, finally brings Tashi and Yoshi, along with an eclectic
group of close friends and extended family, together on tape. Nue draws on aspects
of Tashi's background for his widest vision to date-among them the minimalist bagpipe
music of Yoshi, who co-composed three of the tracks, the psychoacoustic and
perceptual explorations of his mentor, composer James Tenney, and reimagined
forms of ancient and devotional music. The album, however, is not a tribute to the
past or a recapitulation of familiar sounds. Instead, Nue is an intertwining of people
and ideas as a means of growing, of looking inward to move outward, and of looking
back to move forward. To achieve this growth, Tashi assembled a core group of fell
ow travelers, including Yoshi, composer Julia Holter, producer Cole MGN, and
percussionist Corey Fogel to give life to this multifaceted suite. As an experience,
Nue subtly navigates the interactions, intimacy and spaciousness of this group. The
album's title itself is a nod to Tashi's abiding interest in duality and the unknown: nue
is a mythological Japanese chimera with the face of a monkey, the legs of a tiger, and a
snake for a tail, a composite form, at once disturbing and otherworldly. But, as the
composer points out, nue is also French for naked-stripped of complexity, bare and
exposed, but also raw and essential. From the doubling of tones-and the world of
harmonic nuances such an action produces-to the rich interplay between individual
musicians, all baring their own personalities and experiences through shared
performance, Tashi's compositions allow space for these elements to join and grow.
The multipartite creature that is an ensemble melds in the simplicity an d purity of the
music itself.