CD of the Day - "HUMI: Dune"

CD of the Day
HUMI: "Dune" (MoonJune MJR 019) 2008
Scheduled for release in the USA on August 19, 2008, this intriguing and mesmerizing album - recorded in London last Fabruary - travels through many sonic landscapes. The graphic work by label head Leonardo Pavkovic is my kind of cover art, evoking the Pete Turner CTI style.
Actually, HUMI is a duo formed by Hugh Hopper (electric bass, loops) and Yumi Hara Cawkwell (keyboards, vocals, percussion). They met in August 2007, and decided to start a new project immediately. Hopper's complex, multi-layered bass sound with various effects and loops, together with Cawkwell's delicate, but at times violent and explosive keyboard playing and her vocalise stemming from Japanese folk singing create a highly cerebral, yet extremely sensual sound world which breaks the boundaries between psychedelic, progressive rock, free jazz, contemporary classical and world music: in other words, it is 21st century international Canterbury music. Their distinctive stage presence, concentration and communication during the performance have to be witnessed live.
From soothing moments of calm reflection to jagged swipes at the psyche, the collective voices of HUMI form textures, moods, improvisation and formal compositions into a cohesive, expressive language. Beyond the confines of genre, there's an eloquent, spellbinding quality that arises when two risk-taking players go exploring. Subtle, exotic and eloquent, don't expect anything obvious from Hugh Hopper and Yumi Hara Cawkwell.

Hugh Hopper: "If born in 19th century, Hugh Hopper would have been a cartographer or topographer, an explorer of territory and definer of space. Not for him, the observer’s projections onto peoples and customs of anthropology. First and foremost, he makes music that charts landscapes, if it has an emotional aspect, it is in our reaction to it rather than in the places and attractions to which it takes us." (JazzWise Magazine, UK)

Yumi Hara Cawkwell : Yumi Hara Cawkwell studied medicine at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and practiced as a psychiatrist for eight years before moving to the UK in 1993. In 1999, she graduated in music from City University in London with a first-class honours degree specialising in acoustic and electroacoustic composition and performance (piano). She also undertook extensive study of non-western musics. Yumi Hara Cawkwell has completed her PhD in composition at City University under Rhian Samuel in 2005 and has received a number of awards including a prize in the Continuum Ensemble Improvisation Competition, Sculpted Sound competition and the British Medical Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology Fanfare Competition to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. Her music has been performed by, among others, PianoCircus, Ensemble Bash, Jane Chapman and OKEANOS in concerts and festivals in the UK and Japan. Yumi has led voice improvisation workshops for the Yokohama Boys and Girls Chorus at the ISCM World Music Days in 2001, taught music production to young offenders at the Islington Youth Offending Centre and gave a paper on The Oral Traditions of Japanese Blind Mediums at the University of Sorbonne in Paris. She regularly gives improvised performances as a solo vocalist, duo with David Cross, and HUMI (Hugh Hopper & Yumi Hara Cawkwell). In addition, Yumi Hara Cawkwell is active as a DJ, and since 1996, has been a member of the performance-art girlband Frank Chickens. She also performs with Vaseline Towers and Lemon Squeezer and is a Lecturer in Music at University of East London.