Alchemic Life

For a label whose catalog has historically steered clear of guitar‑centered music, “Alchemic Life” stands out as a striking and intentional exception. Marek Winiarski has never been drawn to jazz guitar; aside from early entries in the Not Two catalog by Polish guitar players Jarek Śmietana and Bohdan Lizoń, and later Joe Morris—featured primarily as a bassist— the instrument is scarcely represented anywhere in the label’s discography. Even the final release of Not Two’s Kraków years, “Play Standards” by Ground Zero (issued in cooperation with Wschodnie Triady and No Earplugs in 2022), is a rare case where guitar becomes a dominant, driving force across the 2‑LP set. Against that backdrop, the prominence of Natsuki Kido’s guitar on “Alchemic Life”—bold, central, and unmistakable, capturing the electric atmosphere of Alchemia—remains one of the album’s defining surprises. Yet in the hands of Kazutoki Umezu’s KIKI Band, this deviation feels less like a departure and more like an expansion of the label’s adventurous core.

Kido’s role on “Alchemic Life” is central to the album’s identity. He is one of the most important guitarists in Japan’s progressive rock scene, a musician whose technical command is matched by an unusually broad expressive range. His background spans avant‑garde improvisation, high‑velocity rock, tango, and various strands of folk and ethnic music. That breadth becomes a crucial part of the KIKI Band’s sound. Listeners encountering him for the first time often react to the sheer physicality of his playing—the speed, the articulation, the precision that seems to push the instrument beyond its limits. But what ultimately defines him is not virtuosity alone; it is the emotional intelligence behind every gesture. His lines can cut with jagged intensity, then pivot into lyrical arcs that open unexpected space in the music. He can lock into a riff with rock‑like authority or dissolve into textural abstraction that pushes the ensemble into new terrain. On “Alchemic Life”, this flexibility becomes the hinge on which the band’s transformations turn, and the reason the guitar—unexpected in the Not Two universe—feels not only justified but indispensable.

The quartet is led by Umezu, one of the world’s most inventive reed players, whose command of alto and soprano saxophone, clarinet, and bass clarinet has fueled a lifetime of boundary‑crossing collaborations. A central force in Tokyo’s creative‑music scene, Umezu has moved fluidly between free jazz, rock, Middle Eastern modalities, folk traditions, and countless hybrid forms, working with figures from Yosuke Yamashita and Yoshihide Otomo to John Zorn, George Lewis, Fred Frith, Marc Ribot, and many others across Japan, and Europe. His reach extends even further—into blues, rumba, taiko, Okinawan and Korean ritual music, and dance and butoh—each encounter feeding the restless imagination that animates this band.

“Alchemic Life” channels that expansive spirit into eight tightly crafted pieces by Umezu, Kido, and bassist Takeharu Hayakawa. The music is a high‑energy weave of contrasts: razor‑edged riffs and sudden rhythmic swerves, muscular grooves that fracture into airborne improvisation, sly humor, and passages of raw, open intensity. Umezu’s reeds dart and flare; Kido’s guitar drives the music with both jagged force and lyrical sweep; Hayakawa’s electric bass shifts the ground underfoot; and Joe Trump’s drumming propels the ensemble with precision and volatility.

The album’s title—an affectionate nod to Kraków’s Alchemia club—captures its ethos: transformation through collision, the alchemy of recombining elements gathered from everywhere Umezu has traveled. In that sense, the prominence of guitar is not an anomaly but part of the experiment. “Alchemic Life” emerges as a vivid, full‑throttle testament to Umezu’s boundless artistic reach and a rare, electrifying entry in the Not Two catalog—one that broadens the label’s terrain while remaining unmistakably in its spirit.