The improvisational duo of drummer Akio Jeimus and guitarist Julian Urrego will perform at Track House, 722 E. Blake, on Friday, Dec. 13.
Wichita’s Mike Unruh will also perform a set featuring bass clarinet and electronics.
Jeimus grew up in Chicago but later moved to Japan. He took up residence in Fukushima and, as he says, “playing experimental music more than [he] anticipated,” including joining the ranks of the acclaimed Osaka-based Goat (jp).
He notes that he and Urrego have known each other for around a decade and have played in a variety of contexts in that time. They also have a common academic background as both have studied engineering, although Urrego recently returned to school to study music.
Still, the present moment marks the first time that the two have toured together.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’re playing shows on multiple nights. Is the goal to do something different each night or, if you stumble upon something you both like one night, do you say, “That was good, we should develop that in the next show?”
It kind of depends on how things shape up. I think it’ll probably be somewhere in between. The goal is to make every night special for the audience as well as for us to also work on a shared language, [to] build up a shared vocabulary and explore the ideas or the concepts that we think are worth exploring night to night. Playing a run of six shows in the span of less than a week is a cool opportunity to do something new but also reflect on each night and see what we like and see what we [think] are stand out moments and see if we can expand on [them] or go deeper.
How much does the room that you’re playing in tend to impact the musical exchange. If you’re in a non-traditional space, there are likely to be certain acoustic properties that you wouldn’t face in a room designed for musical performance.
That’s an influence. … For the first part of this tour, I’ll be playing drum kits that are owned by the venues. That’s a big influence on how the set might go or the decisions I might make. The drums [that you’re playing] influence that, too, whether it’s an older kit or a new kit, how it’s tuned, the size of the drums, the type of heads. I’m a very feel-based drummer. How things feel in certain ways almost influences me more than how something sounds. How the kit feels on a certain night will dictate how I’m going to approach playing on each night as well.
Can it be rewarding sometimes if you have to fight a little bit with a kit or a room?
Definitely. Sometimes it can get annoying, like when the bass drum pedal keeps falling off the bass drum. That kind of thing makes [it all] more difficult, but when a floor tom has a weird resonance or you’re trying to rimshot on a snare or tom, but the height is weird, so you don’t quite nail it every time? I think those kinds of things are really interesting.
If someone’s coming to a show like this to hear improvised music, and they’re a little uncertain, what would you tell them to put them at ease?
Improvisation is a technique used in music that opens up a lot of doors and when things are going a certain way within a performance like that, it can be really, really special. Even as an audience member, I think you can feel it. When things don’t go a certain way or when things aren’t clicking, I think that can be equally interesting.
