Baptism

Baptism is the first purely solo recording by Yamamoto Seiichi. Those listeners familiar with his playing with the Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, and ROVO may be in for something of a surprise: this is a very subdued, fairly jazzy recording. Seiichi plays with a very clean tone, adding only sustain at times. His playing is an odd mix: the clean tone and general melodicism bring to mind the Jim Halls of the world, but his use of extremely wide intervals and occasional extended techniques betray something of a debt to Derek Bailey. The key is that he never loses a sense of melody and knows the value of silence as a compositional tool. On "Half Tone" and "Step," he makes use of multi-tracking to accompany himself. He mostly sticks to a single-string approach but uses a more chordal style on "Humming" and "Nothing." Subdued and contemplative, Baptism shows a very different side to Seiichi.