Artist Name: Blind Io
Members: Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone), Bram De Looze (piano), Ikue Mori (electronics, laptop), Teun Verbruggen (drums)
Nationality: American (Ingrid Laubrock), Belgian (Teun Verbruggen, Bram De Looze), Japanese (Ikue Mori)
Release: Blind Io's Pillars of Creation (Part 1) is out via RATS.
Review by: Tobias Fischer interviewing himself

This interview review is part of 15 Questions's project of finding new, more engaging formats for the review format.



What is more important – the material or what you're doing with it?

To me, that's one of the key questions not just in improvised music, but music in general.

Let's look at the “materials” we have here. The core of Blind Io is composed of a pretty traditional jazz ensemble: Sax, piano, drums. To this, the band add laptop and various electronics, but even that, in itself, doesn't make the line-up unusual. You can play fairly conventional music with it.

That's obviously not what Blind Io are doing on their debut album, however: You'll hear “extended techniques” on the saxophone, rhythms constantly in search of a meter, a lot of staccato-notes on the piano and layers upon layers of sounds seemingly beamed in from another dimension.

And still, this is neither a conventional jazz record not your average hard-to-digest-improv session.

So what makes the album special?

What instantly struck me is that very few performers would respond to the cues of the other band members this way.

“Hasya” is a case in point and a perfect opening statement because it gently eases you into the album's galaxy while instantly grabbing you by the ears.



The initial drum-only bars by Teun Verbruggen have a searching, inquisitive quality to them. Then, Bram De Looze's piano joins in, sending back a signal in morse code. It could go anywhere from here, and my expectation was for it to remain in this forever-transitory state.

But when Ingrid Laubrock joins in on sax, her lines are actually remarkably lyrical, and suddenly, all elements coalesce, the groove solidifies and the band lift off.

“Miss Flitworth” also fits this pattern.

Even more so, actually. It has the exact same structure but gets to the point faster and with even more power. Verbruggen's drumming is coming at you from all sides - it's almost as if he's got four arms here, switching from pounding snare work to the rides and toms and back again.



Together with the shorter "Windle Poons," this makes for a superb opening suite.

It's physical music, groove music, dance music almost, but the patterns switch up every moment, the pulse is restless, the trance constantly disrupted. There is no resolution here, other than the moment the musicians stop playing.

It sounds like an exhausting listen.

To the contrary, it's like an intravenous caffeine injection. And it's utterly contagious: Once you're hooked, you're hooked. The band are currently on tour – can you imagine how exhilarating they must sound live?

On a purely subjective level, I would sometimes want for the music to linger in the moment just a little longer rate rather than switching gear again and going into overdrive.

But then again, you can hear the enthusiasm, the pleasure of taking things to these extremes and the need for release. It's very hard to fault them for having fun.  

There's a word you don't hear people use a lot with this kind of music – fun.

That's because it's not “this kind of music.”

So what it is? There have been a lot of quite intriguing bands with a ritualistic approach recently: RONIN, Strukturstruktur, Fractal Sextet. Does Blind Io perhaps fit into this niche as well?

That's precisely the thing: They do and they don't. On the one hand, the drums clearly play a key role here, similar to the formations you mentioned. Groove and texture are vital, too.

But Verbruggen never settles into that typically slow, swampy hallucinatory swagger. Because there is no bass here - De Looze does pick up some of the lower registers, but a piano will never ground the pieces the way a bass does - Pillars of Creation (Part 1) is more airy, more open, less dense. It is also, one might say, more lucid.

There are also several “ambient” moments here, where the pulse disappears, disengages, dissolves, and gives way to the space that was hidden behind it. Some of these, including the breathtaking “Bary Center” are among the definitive highlights of the release as a whole.



When I heard the album for the first time, I instantly thought: This band was founded by the drummer. Simply because there is such an instant rhythmical element here. With each subsequent listen, however, you discover that it's perhaps Ingrid Laubrock's sax and Ikue Mori's laptop contributions which ultimately set Blind Io apart.

I totally agree. Laubrock is playing quite stunningly beautiful melodies here, and she literally makes you listen to the drum 'n keys section in a totally different light.

On “Vira,” she hits harmonics which lend a flute-like timbre to her instrument and the effect is mesmerising, especially against the backdrop of a buzzing, electric-fairytale like soundscape painted by Mori.

It almost reminded me of the opening to Tangerine Dream's “Alpha Centauri.”



Which brings me to the electronics which I haven't mentioned yet but which are vital to the band. You get a lot of crackling and humming, little clicks and cuts, swooshings and sighs. But remarkably, these sonic particles don't serve to make the music sound weird or more abstract. They, too, fit into the overall structure organically, defying their outwardly abstract nature.

Music can be art for art's sake, functional, an escape to a different world, a call to arms – where do you see this particular release in this regard?

First and foremost, it's a captivating set of pieces, each of them filled to the brim with ideas, inventiveness and imaginative instrumental interplay.

But to get back to your opening question: The materials do matter, but ultimately, it's what we do with them that determines their impact. Even in a world of “alien materials”, you can shape a positive, human future.

It's releases like this that remind us of this important truth.