Slope Up Session Club is one of those loose musical entities that every city worth its salt musically can boast at least one of. A regular jam-night series begets a semi-formal, indie-scene supergroup, porous in terms of personnel, generally operating on a highly improvised jazz-funk axis with plenty of post-rock input. Tokyo is the kind of city that has any number of these, but the Slope Up bunch is worth special attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three mononymic notables among the night\/band\u2019s recurring participants are Kim, of the debonair bass-loops and drums duo Uhnellys, Ruppa of the genuinely dangerous jazz-punk unit Kagero, and Tatsu of rambunctious ska band L\u00c4-PPISCH. Nobody\u2019s a nobody here, not even Nozomi Nobody, a bespoke indie chanteuse by day, definitely doing something different here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are free jazz all season, thank you\u201d is the Slope Up motto, and it does take priority on this batch of live takes, though you\u2019ll find they\u2019ve made room for spoken word (\u201cpostman\u201d), humorous gestures, and what has to be the fiercest punk song this reviewer has heard in a while, \u201crepel virus\u201d. The muscular \u201cbackground\u201d, a real workout, gets things rolling, followed by the sneaky \u201ccookie\u201d, deceptively directionless until it comes together on a powerful groove. There\u2019s more room to breathe is \u201cchildren are leaving\u201d, and thus get a better sense of just how expressive these players are. One can\u2019t say the same of \u201cstart the past\u201d, the album\u2019s one (long) disappointment, but then \u201csalt and breakdown\u201d ties up all loose ends with a hasty yet satisfying final volley of uninhibited euphoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n