Taiko Do: Echo of the Soul

As we saw in the March issue (#155), the craze for Japanese taiko drumming is far reaching. KyoShinDo are a group of Italians who hang out in the Ligurian Apennines. But their leaders, Kurumaya Masaaki and Joji Hirota, are Japanese, and their past work includes the musical direction of the Lindsay Kemp Dance Company and the Red Buddha Theatre. Like Kodo, this group make their own instruments, but that's where the similarities end, as the liner notes to this CD make clear, KyoShinDo strive to evoke mystical experiences through their playing.

They don't manage that here. They start o¡ with a brave attempt to delineate a sonic landscape, but it soon settles into a routine jog delivered at an almost unrelieved fortissimo. There's no sense of drama or structure in any of their nine tracks, which, apart from intermittent shouts and some occasional bursts of Japanese dialogue, all sound pretty much the same. There's no exploration of rhythm or texture, no sense of an ensemble in which different groups of players play contrasting roles, and thereɧs none of that refined sculpting of sound that makes the music of Kodo so riveting. But the works in the Kodo repertoire have been composed with Reichian finesse. No such luck here.