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Satoko Fujii Quartet

Angelona

Libra 204-014

Despite the fact that she's consistently hailed by jazz writers as one of the freshest compositional and instrumental talents in contemporary jazz, Satoko Fujii is still mysteriously underrated in the UK, something that will surprise all those Old Vortex regulars who witnessed her quartet's extraordinary pungency and originality first hand in the club's last year in Stoke Newington.

This album (approximately the pianist's thirtieth release as leader or co-leader in the last decade) captures her quartet in typically full-blooded form, interspersing no-holds-barred, raucously exhilarating ensemble (and solo) free improvisation with industrial-strength time playing powered by a densely textured yet versatile rhythm section (bassist Takeharu Hayakawa, drummer Tatsuya Yoshida) and spearheaded by the wonderfully brassy, alternately rattling and screaming (but consistently controlled) trumpet of Natsuki Tamura.

Satoko Fujii herself is as adept at producing cascades of torrential free playing as the odd passage of luminous delicacy; the overall band sound is arresting, viscerally powerful yet rewardingly subtle and sophisticated.

Admirers of the pianist and trumpeter's freer playing should try to get hold of a trio album (Libra 203-013), Fragment, featuring Junk Box (a trio completed by percussionist John Hollenbeck); those after what one reviewer has memorably described as 'Don Cherry [joining] an avant goth-rock band – booked to score an Italian horror movie' should attempt to track down the Natsuki Tamura Quartet's Hada Hada (Libra 104-008), an extraordinary confection of hypnotic but irresistibly energetic sounds on which Satoko Fujii plays synthesiser.