Japan’s Taku Sugimoto has become an anomaly in the ever expanding world of electroacoustic improvisation: when he plays his guitar, it actually sounds like a guitar. When sound for sound’s sake is the name of the game, an identifiable instrumental sound–let alone a linear instrumental statement–can absolutely rupture the context. But on the 1999 album The World Turned Upside Down (Erstwhile), where he plays with AMM’s brilliant tabletop guitarist Keith Rowe and percussionist-electronicist Gunter Muller, Sugimoto’s contemplative, softly articulated lines emerge from the undulating harmonics, electronics-enhanced scrapes and thwacks, and humming static like lights shimmering up from the depths of a fountain. For this performance Sugimoto and Muller will be joined by Chicago’s Kevin Drumm, who’s collaborated with both men in the past. While he frequently plays tabletop guitar with the same focus on elusive abstraction as Rowe, their styles are night and day. Drumm is usually less aggressive, and instead of sumptuous, reverberant swells he delivers microscopic gestures as ornate and detailed as Japanese calligraphy. Friday, February 1, 10 PM, 6Odum, 2116 W. Chicago; 312-666-0795 or 773-227-3617.
