Otomo Yoshihide & Quentin Rollet - Flying Kaijus [Bisou Records 024]

Scheduled to be put out on the circuit via the Quentin Rollet co-founded Bisou Records label on November 7th, 2k26 is "Flying Kaijus", a nine tracks and and roughly 43 minutes spanning album which sees the French composer, sax player and long-standing musical activist in collaboration with Japanese experimental musician, guitar player and turntablist Otomo Yoshihide for the first time ever even though the two artists have known each other for three decades. Recorded in November of 2k24 whilst Yoshihide was in France for a series of shows and concerts the album is compiled and performed from an angle of no prior planning and composing, pairing the sound of Yoshihide's turntable and flexidisc experimentation with Rollet's electronics and heavy use and abuse of alto and soprano saxophones as his real world instruments of choice. The result of this venture is initially introduced by "Swallows Sparrows Starlings" which presents a combination of longing, oftentimes sustained sax tones and motifs and subtle digital Noize hissings followed by the fusion of beautiful melodies and screaming, tortured and tormented hyperpressed sax execution in "Laughing Crows", the electroacoustic angle, chiming metals, unsettling vocal transformations and dark, threatening tectonic movements of "Woodpecker's Lament" which surprisingly find relief and redemption in inward looking late nights sax melancholia whereas "Chicks On Weed" are relatively chill and tender yet riddled by scraping surface noises and the epicly titled final boss fight named "Mothra vs Godzilla" weighs in heavy fluttering and highly detailed digital Noize chaos and a fever dream of a gazillion hyperactive sonic events at once just to name a few. This is not an easy album but one for the headstrong and Avantgarde informed only.