Birthingbodies by Fuubutsushi
Digital Download released September 2022
Fuubutsushi – the quartet of Chris Jusell, Chaz Prymek, Matthew Sage, and Patrick Shiroishi – return after an ambitious run of releases in 2020-2021. Birthingbodies EP, a three-song digital set, marks the band moving into the future after their past journeys through the seasons and nostalgia. A notion of vigilant tenderness, the EP is elegant and also at its core radical. All funds raised via bandcamp sales will be donated to WWW.MOFUND.ORG, a reproductive healthcare resource in Missouri, where Prymek resides; Missouri, along with several other states, enacted extreme anti-abortion laws when Roe vs. Wade was overturned earlier this year.
After the four albums that comprised Shiki and their Longform composition, “Good Sky Day,” the quartet enters into a somewhat minimal and reflective air on Birthingbodies EP. These three songs, written on guitar and bass by Prymek, are shuttled into fluttering beams of light with sumptuous strings, horns, synths and piano weaving and shimmering through the evocative compositions. The group explored mosaic multitracking on their 4xCD Shiki, but Birthingbodies EP refrains from those layered complexities; primarily percussionless, largely drifting on billowing melodic notions and ornate, introspective guitar figures, these three songs are Fuubutsushi at their most reserved, but hardly conservative. As they are wont to do, and always straddling stylings and finding their own sound, fans of both minimal post rock predecessors like Rachel’s and ECM and similarly sentimental contemporary jazz-inflected music will appreciate these intimate compositions.
A perfect soundtrack to the approaching change in seasons, Birthing Bodies EP is a notion, a demonstration; the melodies feel loyal, and despite being somewhat simplistic, there is a staunch and disruptive ferocity melted into these rippling pools of music. Though tempered, these motivations distill these motifs and send light through the heavy air.
Chris Jusell - Violin
Chaz Prymek - Guitar, Bass Guitar, Lapsteel Guitar
Matthew Sage - Piano, Synthesizers, Autoharp
Patrick Shiroishi - Saxophones, Wind Synth, Glockenspiel, Voice
Painting by Chaz Prymek
©MMXXIV