Review "Upstream"

A recent review of "Upstream" by Geoff Leigh & Yumi Hara.

http://www.progressor.net/review/leigh_hara_2009.html

Review - Upstream

allaboutjazz.com

The former Yumi Hara Cawkwell is obviously intent on fashioning her own musical territory, if this and her previous Moonjune release —Dune(2008), as one half of a duo with the late bassist Hugh Hopper —are anything to go by. Her partner here is one-time Henry Cow member Geoff Leigh, whose concentration on the flute for a lot of the music presented here adds a layer of meaning to a shared aesthetic, one in which the meditative is kept at bay for all of the minimal nature of much of this music by an air of unease, as if both performers are acutely aware of the potential risks inherent in music-as-background.
On the opening title track this is only too apparent. The music seems to hang in the air, although the air it hangs in is seemingly fraught with implication, as though the duo's accommodation with the moment has come about only after intense negotiations.
With that in mind, "The Mountain Laughs" charts Leigh waxing as rhapsodically as he does at any point in the program over Hara's negligible keyboard modulations. It's as close to safe as anything here, but the intelligences at work ensure that the music never strays into the merely ambient.
Set against this, the mood of "Stones On The Beach" strikes that balance between the meditative and the unsettling with uncommon grace, its effect aided in no small part by Hara's vocal, in which she intones a lyric penned by Ujo Noguchi, set to music originally titled Ishohara Bushi.
Hara's meandering piano intro to "A Short Night" proves to be the harbinger of more music that flirts with the meditative, even though it turns out to be shot through with a kind of unease, avoiding the merely hypnotic. The duo's poise, more the result of a conflation of musical outlooks than a mere meeting of minds, ensures that the music holds the attention.
"Something About The Sky" underlines that point; the merely incantatory is kept at a distance, even while suggested by Hara's vocal intonations. For all of its aptitude for stasis, various indefinable qualities keep it from being so, even while a rein is kept on the piece's long tones. The result is music that is inscrutable in the distance it maintains between itself and language.

Geoff Leigh: flute, soprano sax, zither, percussion, nose flute, voice drone, electronics;
Yumi Hara: keyboards, vocals.

By Nic Jones
Published: January 17, 2010
Style: Electronica

Review - Upstream

Dusted Magazine

Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara - "Upstream"

The prolific Moonjune label drops this duo offering from Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara, two veteran improvisers. It essentializes each musician’s current concerns, highlighting what each does best in the process.

Both are multi-instrumentalists, with Leigh’s virtuosity and timbral diversity evident all the way back to one-off projects such as Mousetrap and the debut albums by Henry Cow and Hatfield and the North. More recently, he’s comprised one half of the ambient-drone duo Ex-Wise Heads, not to mention having performed and recorded with the enigmatic but visceral Faust. Hara’s earlier efforts include a beautiful set of soundscapes with the late Hugh Hopper, also released by Moonjune, but she’s also a composer, teacher and researcher, her scholarly work encompassing rhythm, improvisation and psychology.

The murky depths of human emotion are plumbed from the first gestures on Upstream, but sometimes the evocations go beyond one emotive state. Hara’s crystalline keyboard lines are matched gorgeously by Leigh’s flute trills and breathy swells, the timbres inhabiting a unified space. The two instruments bend pitches symbiotically, coming together on certain notes with satisfying synchronicity. On “The Mountain Laughs,” Hara switches to an edgy organ, adding tention to her rough-hewn chords as Leigh explores echoing expanses with each flute flutter and shake. These are meditative explorations that, in the spirit of Coltrane, conjure Orientalist themes without necessarily being specific as to geographic region.

Everything changes on “The Strait,” the proceedings becoming harsher and often more dissonant as Leigh breaks out the scronky saxophone. His long-cultivated “New Thing” figures alter and repeat over Hara’s craggy piano. A similar sheen of raw processing covers Hara’s voice and percussion on “Stone of the Beach.” It’s almost as if the disc was programmed to lead slowly to this stark but complex collection of overtones and syllables. Hara’s vocal range is impressive, as she runs the gamut from whispers to full-boar ululations, Leigh aiding and abetting at every turn.

A listening or two reveals the disc to be a series of well-placed tableaus that form an arch, so that when “Return of the Sirens” is reached, there is a palpable sense of completion. The meditative textures of Upstream are regained, the album ending in the gentle vain that began it. While electronics are used throughout, they never eclipse the human element. The sense of a duo in full improvisational flight is maintained, joining virtuosity and invention in contributing to the disc’s success.

By Marc Medwin

Nov 13, 2009

Review - Upstream

Geoff Leigh & Yumi Hara - Upstream (CD, Moonjune, Progressive)

Upstream is an album aimed at listeners with an open mind. Geoff Leigh plays/uses a variety of things on this album including flute, soprano sax, zither, percussion, nose flute (?), voice drone, and electronics while Yumi Hara plays keyboards and sings. Leigh is probably best known as an early member of the British progressive band Henry Cow and also played in the bands Slapp Happy and Hatfield and the North. Hara was/is in the band Frank Chickens and also acts as a DJ under the name Anakonda. Anyone even slightly familiar with any of these other bands will have some idea of what to expect here which is...the unexpected. Upstream is a bizarre collection of tracks that go all over the place. Fans of the previously mentioned Henry Cow will find a lot to love here. Leigh still composes tunes that could almost fall into the modern classical category...but threads of popular music remain intertwined. Some of the tracks are more musical than others...while others are more experimental in nature. Yumi's strange dreamy vocals add a particularly odd element to these proceedings. Nine heady cuts including "Upstream," "Stone of the Beach," "Dolphin Chase," and "The Siren Returns."

Review - Upstream

A West-East axis bold as love: the Canterbury vigor meets the Rising Sun delicacy.

Having played with Hugh Hopper in the HUMI project and ex-CRIMSO violin maestro David Cross, Yumi Hara isn't new to the specific English scene and now she teams up with Geoff Leigh who first came to prominence with HENRY COW and later was all over the Canterbury field. Together, the two find common ground in the meditative tones set by the opening title track where Leigh's flute navigates the electronically enhanced crystal-cold air between the mountainous walls from the left side of Hara's piano that sometimes echoes the barrelhouse and dwells there in the rolling avant-garde of "The Strait". More melodiously, "The Mountain Laughs" introduces Celtic folk motifs to the majestic Tibetan drone bordering on baroque fugue, and "Dolphin Chase" sees Yumi's ethereal voice and Geoff's saxes sending signals from underwater, while in "The Siren Returns" piano and flute rise Eastward-bound in a tired silky way. At the same time, "At The Temple Gate" repositions jazzy strain into the candescent cascades of Buddhist prayer, and "Stone Of The Beach" wraps up the vocals in a pulsating white noise glow. The result is strange but rapturously mesmerizing, and it's the music's deceptive simplicity that begs to try and sail upstream once and again.

****

Review - Upstream

Otra novedad de Moonjune, que también he escuchado este mediodia en casa, es un album de Geoff Leigh ( sí, el de Henry Cow) y Yumi Hara, titulado "Upstream".

El disco que Yumi Hara publicó el año pasado con Hugh Hopper, "Dune", me gustó bastante poco, así que no tenía demasiadas esperanzas con este. Quizás por eso me ha gustado. Aunque Leigh es multiinstrumentista, aquí se centra mucho en la flauta, aunque también hace algún solo de saxo soprano y se encarga de los efectos electrónicos y las percusiones. Yumi se encarga del piano y del órgano y de las voces (no me gusta nada cantando). Algunas de las piezas instrumentales me han sorprendido. Yumi toca el piano con mucha "tensión" y Leigh es muy bueno con la flauta. Sé perfectamente que no es un disco que me vaya a volver loco, pero tengo ganas de volver a escucharlo.

Review - Upstream

Not sure why the link isn't working here - usually fine - try copy/paste with this :

http://www.seaoftranquility.org/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=8249

Geoff Leigh (ex-Henry Cow) teams up with Japanese singer and keyboardist Yumi Hara for this album of experimental ambient-jazz fusion.

Leigh has always been at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of music since his days playing with Henry Cow's brand of freely-improvised jazz and complex modern composition. Hara moved to the UK in 1993 and has since played with ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper and with ex-King Crimson violinist David Cross. By night, in her alter-persona of Anakonda she spins as a drum 'n' bass DJ! Put the two together and you can immediately tell that you are not going to get an hour of easy, comfortable listening! You'd be right!

Indeed, the promotional notes accompanying the CD say that "it's difficult to discern whether Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara are improvising freely or if they've pre-composed pieces on their collaboration. If it's the former, then their spontaneity has generated a good degree of melodic invention. If the latter possibility is so, then their works have an untethered nature, working through a succession of encounters that often sound ritualistic or meditative". Hmmm...Upstream was recorded in two days, so I'd suggest it is improvised – it sounds improvised, though I'd agree with the statement that there is plenty of "melodic invention". But let me just share this other gem from the promo notes with you, because it did make me laugh out loud: "Leigh coats his small gongs with an effects burnish, spangling into infinity"! I wish I had written that!

Anyhow, back to the music, which I'm calling ambient-jazz fusion. If you take a look at the album cover and the song titles then you could easily imagine that this is a concept album. Not that there are any real lyrics to guide you - although "Stone of the Beach" and "At the Temple Gate" do feature words by Japanese poets – but the album is coherent musically and its amenability to ambience also makes it amenable to creating images associated with the title concepts, should you wish to do so.

Leigh plays flute, soprano sax, zither, percussion, nose flute, voice drone and "electronics" and Hara tackles keyboards (mainly piano, but some keys and synths to good effect) and vocals/vocalisations. The instruments are often pushed to, and through, the limits of what is "normal", so that one can say that there is a certain amount of experimentation going on here. Similarly, Hara pushes her voice in the same way, treating it just like on of the other instruments of the ensemble. This leads, at times – thankfully few – where the vocal becomes unpleasantly screechy and, in my opinion, detracting from the music. Let me put it this way – should you be listening to, for instance, "Something About the Sky" on your iPod whilst travelling on public transport, and you decide to "sing" along, then you can be sure the men in white coats will be waiting for you at the next stop! The ambience created on these occasions by these "sung" sections comes close to that of the bells being tolled at the gates of Hades! Such is the nature of exploratory, adventurous, progressive music!

Notwithstanding this slight criticism, the majority of the album is extremely pleasant: the sonorities created are interesting and work well together, and there is much melody as well as discernable, enjoyable rhythm that creates comfortable ambiences.

If you're looking for an easy entry into exploratory ambient/jazz crossover, then this album could well be it!

Track Listing:- 

1) Upstream (7:12) 

2) The Mountain Laughs (5:28) 

3) The Strait (7:41) 

4) Stone of the Beach (5:41) 

5) A Short Night (5:08) 

6) At the Temple Gate (7:43) 

7) Something About the Sky (3:45) 

8) Dolphin Chase (10:52) 

9) The Siren Returns (5:39)

September 20th 2009

Reviewer: Alex Torres

Review - Upstream

GEOFF LEIGH & YUMI HARA / Upstream (Moonjune)

Le second disque de Yumi Hara chez Moonjune. Le premier était en duo avec Hugh Hopper. Cette fois, un duo avec le flûtiste et saxophoniste Geoff Leigh (Henry Cow, nombreux projets liés au jazz-rock de type Canterbury). Une collaboration solide, toute en nuances. Des pièces douces, introspectives, frôlant parfois le drone. Plus de chant de la part de Hara, dont la voix hante plus qu’elle n’envoûte (ce qui n’est pas un mauvais point). Leigh est plein de ressources, multipliant les approches et les instruments. Un beau disque à réécouter à tête reposée. Une belle découverte, plutôt accessible, pas tout à fait “impro libre” mais certainement pas jazz-rock non plus. [Ci-dessous: La page de l’album sur le site de Moonjune, avec plusieurs extraits audio et deux vidéos en concert.]

Yumi Hara’s second CD for Moonjune. The first one was a duo session with Hugh Hopper. This time, she is playing with flutist/saxophonist Geoff Leigh (of Henry Cow and several jazz-rock projects loosely tied to the Canterbury sphere). A strong collaboration, very nuanced. Quiet, introspective pieces occasionally verging on drones. More singing from Hara, whose voice is haunting more than rapturing (which is not a bad thing). Leigh is very resourceful, approaching the music in many different ways and with several instruments. A fine record I will happily listen to again once I’m well rested. A nice discovery, rather accessible, not quite “free improv” but definitely not a jazz-rock record either. [Below: This album’s page on Moonjune’s website, with several audio samples and two live videos.]

Review - Upstream (in German)

Geoff Leigh & Yumi Hara "Upstream" (Moonjune Records 2009)

Geoff Leigh, Gründungsmitglied in Henry Cow, und die japanische Keyboarderin Yumi Hara, die mit Hugh Hopper und David Cross in Duos zusammenarbeitete, aus der japanischen Kitschtruppe Frank Chickens stammt, Neue Musik in Gruppen wie Piano Circus und Ensemble Bash spielte und als Drum'n'Bass DJ einen Namen hat, gingen an zwei aufeinander folgenden Tagen im September 2008 an die Arbeit, Songs einzuspielen, von denen 9 auf "Upstream" zu hören sind. Die Kompositionen sind improvisativ aufgebaut, spontan, aus der kreativen Inspiration des Augenblicks entstanden. Beide Musiker, Leigh spielt diverse Blasinstrumente, Electronics und Perkussion sowie Zither, Yumi Hara akustisches Piano oder elektrisches Keyboard und singt an einigen wenigen Stellen, sind begabte, gewachsene Handwerker, die nicht das erste Mal expressionistisch-avantgardistische Klänge schaffen, sich auf den Augenblick, die Stimmung verlassen und auf die gegenseitige Inspiration.

Das Resultat ist sehr sperrig, etwas unnahbar, emotional kühl, von großer Verspieltheit, leider aber auch von erschreckender Strukturlosigkeit und wirrem Ablauf. Beide Musiker nehmen sich nicht zurück und lassen Töne zu, die nicht unbedingt angenehm sind, plärren und kratzen und rauschen; und sie verfremden Sounds elektronisch und lassen die Songs so lang werden, dass Hörer dem Duo sehr freundlich und aufgeschlossen gegenüber sein müssen, sich das Album am Stück anzutun.

Es gibt viel Freiheit im Spiel, aber das Duo wirkt nicht befreit. Zwar entwickeln sich im Laufe des Albums einige harmonische Ströme und melodisch nachvollziehbare Motive, die aber im Kanon der atonal unschönen Klänge keine Durchsetzung finden.

Extremhörer dieser Spielart werden das gewiss anders sehen, was das Duo erfreuen wird.

Review - Upstream

Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara

Upstream

Review by Gary Hill

Fans of RIO (Rock In Opposition) should like this album. It’s very freeform and a lot of it is dissonant. I’d even consider some of it jarring. Personally, a lot of it isn’t my thing – I’m not a huge fan of RIO, but for those who are into the genre, it’s going to be well received.

Track by Track Review

Upstream

The flute on this certainly calls up comparisons to Jethro Tull, but this is far mellower and more classical in nature and yet there’s also some definite King Crimson in the midst here.

Mountain Laughs

Keyboard sounds bring this in dark and rather like horror movie music. The flute again makes me think of Tull. This is perhaps closer to “rock” music.

Strait

The first half of this is basically a noisy, riotous piano solo that at times calls to mind Keith Emerson. As other instruments, join, though, it becomes a screaming, wailing jazz journey that’s quite freeform and dissonant.

Stone of the Beach

This one is really weird. The music is sparse and spacey and it has vocals. They are plaintive and a little abrasive, but also pretty. This is very much a piece of performance art.

Short Night

Piano based, this is very dissonant and strange. 

At the Temple Gate

Just flute and voice, this is exceptionally strange and unsettling. It’s not pretty by any means and feels like it has transported you to some alternate horror movie dimension. This is another that’s definitely performance art. 

Something About the Sky

In a lot of ways this is similar to the last piece, but instead of flute we have something that feels a lot like throat singing.

Dolphin Chase

Spacey and jazz, this one is quite cool – at least early on. It moves into more weirdness – not that different from the last couple tracks as it continues, though. In fact, the last section is amongst the strangest music on show with weird sounds like 60 cycle hum ruling the day.

Siren Returns

This is more melodic and less free form than the last several pieces. I like this a lot more.

Review - Upstream

Upstream - Geoff Leigh & Yumi Hara - Moonjune Records - MJR027

A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange by Mark S. Tucker

(progdawg@hotmail.com).

The 70s saw a profusion of wildly cross-collateralized musics emanating from groups with solid musical educations, a ton of woodshedding, and artfully abnormal ideas about what could and could not go into the processes of art. Among the more stunning, and thus least heralded, were ensembles like The Art Bears, Dzyan, Art Zoyd, and groups composing pieces and LPs still ahead of their time. And then there was Henry Cow (a group, not a guy's name!). This much-cherished identity saw the exceptional—indeed stratospheric—virtuosities of Lindsay Cooper, Fred Frith, John Greaves, Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson…and Geoff Leigh, the gent here playing winds, zither, percussion, voice drone, and electronics alongside singer-keyboardist-colorationist Yumi Hara. The two, however, have credentials extending well beyond the just-noted. Leigh sat in with Slapp Happy, Hatfield and the North, Univers Zero, Faust, and others. He also duo-ed with Porcupine Tree's brilliant bassist Colin Edward in the Ex-Wise Heads band. Hara duetted with Hugh Hopper (Soft Machine) and then David Cross (King Crimson) while some of her songs have been covered by Piano Circus and Ensemble Bash.

Even the promo lit isn't sure if the pieces are spontaneous, composed, or a blend of both, but it hardly matters, as there's a hell of a lot of what made all the just-cited groups great. Leigh and Hara masterfully leash the familiar and the chaotic to come up with a disc leaning heavily into the latter with all the grace and coherence of the former. Thus, Upstream is neo-free-fuso-prog-jazz-noise music heavily invested with orientalist airs (Upstream, Stone of the Beach, etc.) and abstract imagery laid atop the familiar, the exotic, and the suggestive.

Almost all the cuts are lengthy (see the times noted below), taking the space necessary to create their atmospheres and then perambulate with gestural abandon within themselves. Such chartable discourse within opuses like these, of course, is what accounts for whether the result will be oblique or filled with marvels. Here, the latter is most decidedly the case, making a release that's going to attract both abstractionists and neoclassical traditionalists, not to mention all the niches between. It goes, then, without saying that Upstream is definitely not music for everyone, but, looking to those with advanced aesthetics and well-tuned ears, a CD that will repay many many re-listenings, trenchant with nuance and imbued with a formlessness that constantly re-creates itself.

Track List:

Upstream (7:12)

The Mountain Laughs (5:28)

The Strait (7:41)

Stone of the Beach (5:41)

A Short Night (5:08)

At the Temple Gate (7:43)

Something About the Sky (3:45)

Dolphin Chase (10:52)

The Siren Returns (5:39)

All tracks written by Geoff Leigh & Yumi Hara except 

the words to Stone of the Beach (Ujo Noguchi) and the words to At the Temple (traditional).

Edited by: David N. Pyles

(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)

Copyright 2009, Peterborough Folk Music Society.

Review - Upstream (In French)

Geoff Leigh & Yumi Hara

Upstream (2009)

(Moonjune Records) Enregistré par Yumi Hara 

01 – Upstream

02 – The Mountain Laughs

03 – The Strait

04 – Stone of the Beach

05 – A Short Night

06 – At the Temple Gate

07 – Something About the Sky

08 – Dolphin Chase

09 – The Siren Returns

Impossible de ne pas penser au précédent disque de Yumi Hara enregistré avec Hugh Hopper (Humi sorti en 2008 chez Moonjune Records également) en découvrant ce nouvel album de la pianiste et improvisatrice japonaise, enregistré en compagnie de Geoff Leigh, saxophoniste et flûtiste de Henry Cow, groupe mythique et ambitieux de la scène Canterbury de la fin des années soixante-dix. Les deux musiciens construisent leur propos sur des bases communes mais ténues, faisant de cette collaboration plus un duel qu’un duo, entre provocation, défi et musique sans concession. 

Geoff Leigh a ainsi pris la suite du patriarche Hopper disparu il y a peu ; et avec ses qualités, sa curiosité et son écoute, il propose à Yumi Hara d’autres horizons. Alors que rétrospectivement, Dune semblait empli de la colère sourde et désespérée du bassiste disparu, Geoff Leigh insuffle une certaine sérénité à ces compositions, et ce malgré les nombreuses aspérités dont elles regorgent. A la flûte, sans doute inspiré par son acolyte, Leigh verse dans une profondeur toute asiatique, évoquant l’ancestral et fascinant shakuhachi au point qu’une prestation dépourvue de tout accompagnement est à envisager sans inconvénient. Jouant de sa voix modulable à l’envie, Yumi Hara use aussi du legato et des grands aller-retours sur la gamme pour se lier au discours de son compère. 

A ce duo fascinant viennent s’agréger bruitages, éclats de piano et improvisations diverses, un didgeridoo parfois, ou un saxophone dans les mains de Geoff Leigh, autant d'instruments bienvenus qui ne contraignent jamais la direction prise par le binôme. Contemplatif sans être exagérément agressif ou abstrait, Upstream est fait pour être écouté en pleine nature dans le vent ou le ressac, il vibre doucement au rythme d’un monde qui nous dépasse.

Mathieu Carré

Note : 7/10

Reviews - Upstream

Artist: GEOFF LEIGH / YUMI HARA 

Title: Upstream 

Label: Moonjune 027 

Country: USA 

Format: CD                    

  

Review: 

Featuring Geoff Leigh on flutes, soprano sax, zither, electronics and percussion and Yumi Hara on keyboards & occasional vocals. Saxist Geoff Leigh was the first member of Henry Cow to leave the group after their first album in 1973. He went on to form Radar Favourites, Black Sheep, Kontakt Mikrophoon Orchestra and Red Balune and has a trio disc on one of those Voice Print labels from a few years back. We haven't heard from him in quite a while so I was pleasantly surprised to get this promo in the mail. You might recall Ms. Yumi Hara from another duo disc she did with Hugh Hopper last year. Yumi also played a fine solo set at our store on the Bowery a few months after that CD was released.

The title track is first and it starts with spooky flute and eerie e-bow-like keyboard sounds. Geoff Leigh's flute playing is consistently superb, spirited and riveting at times. Ms. Hara changes the sound of her keyboard on every piece from the great Hammond organ sound on "The Mountain Laughs" to the sparkling grand piano of "The Strait" in which Geoff sounds as if he is playing an electric sax. Now there's a sound I haven't heard in quite a long time, yet it is done most tastefully. Yumi uses her voice to a good effect on "Stone of the Beach", somewhat operatic and exotic yet still low-key and enchanting. Although much of this sounds improvised there is a sympathetic connection between both players as they seem to flow around one another magically, always connecting on some level. I like the they explore sounds together yet never lose their way. The psychedelic many layered mountains on the cover seem most appropriate. 

Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

http://www.downtownmusicgallery.com (use search box!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Featured Artist: Geoff Leigh - Yumi Hara 

CD Title: Upstream 

Year: 2009 

Record Label: Moonjune Records 

Style: Free Jazz / Avante Garde 

Musicians: Geoff Leigh (flute, soprano sax, zither, percussion, nose flute, voice drone, electronics), Yumi Hara (keyboards, vocals)

Review: 

For starters, the musicians’ respective careers bring quite a bit of diversity to the table. Woodwind artist, multi-instrumentalist Geoff Leigh was a member of avant-garde, prog-rock icons Henry Cow amid stints with many legendary British bands, such as Hatfield And The North and Slapp Happy. Keyboardist Yumi Hara is a psychiatrist, DJ and possesses a PHD in composition from City University in the U.K., and engages in numerous artistic related endeavors in Europe. On this duet release, the duo forges a multifaceted plane of notions and concepts, as no two pieces are distinctly alike, especially when considering various song-form and improvisational aspects. Among other attributes, the musicians are resourceful. They set down an imprint, awash with mind-altering abstractions, marked by Leigh’s ethereal flute lines, Hara’s haunting keys, and the avant component. They keenly alter the pitch in a range of interweaving movements. Then on “The Mountain Laughs,” Hara emulates a church organ via her keyboards while imparting a solemn framework for Leigh’s genial flute lines. Elsewhere, the artists invert a hodgepodge of themes into bizarre environs, where Hara’s vocal chants over the top, offer quasi-mystical propositions. On “Dolphin Chase,” Leigh’s soprano sax phrasings intimate a whirling, free-form set of paradigms, countered by Hara’s response mechanisms, shaded with droning textures and colorific EFX treatments. Here, Leigh soars to the cosmos under the auspices of attaining some sort of spiritual cleansing. Unlike similar projects of this ilk by others, the duo sustains interest throughout the entire program. It’s a study in contrasts, marked by the artists’ clear-sighted game-plan, that is sprinkled with plentiful surprises along the way. 

Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita 

Copyright© 2009 JazzReview.com®. All Rights Reserved. 

http://www.jazzreview.com/cd/review-20654.html

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MoonJune Records - Album Profile: 

It's difficult to discern whether Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara are improvising freely, or if they've pre-composed the pieces on their Upstream collaboration. If it's the former, then their spontaneity has generated a good degree of melodic invention. If the latter possibility is so, then their works have an untethered nature, working through a succession of encounters that often sound ritualistic or meditative. Although a multi-instrumentalist, Leigh concentrates mainly on the flute, although it's frequently fed through an entanglement of electronic effects, lending a subtly harmonised burr. Hara plays keyboards, changing her palette from acoustic piano to hard-edged organ sounds. Often, she can be gently ruminative, but there are also spells where Hara rumbles with great intensity on the piano's bass notes or charges up to a Gothic organ sustain. Their music possesses some highly contrasting densities. Leigh coats his small gongs with an effects burnish, spangling into infinity. Hara also alters her voice at times, again with a subtly harmonised displacement. Leigh sometimes overblows, creating a harsh edge, suggesting the sound of a Japanese shakuhachi flute. This is made all the more gripping when surrounded by the overall atmosphere of slowly evolving calm. The pair also evoke a specific Tibetan Buddhist feel, with bells and a vocal drone, or alternatively matching their high-vaulting voice and soprano saxophone ranges to the imaginary sounds of ocean-deep whale communications. Leigh and Hara have produced a deeply sensitive soundscape, populated by a number of surprising (and exciting) forays into a more intense form of expression.

http://www.moonjune.com/MJR027.htm  (more info, vids, & mp3's)