To say that bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Hideo Yamaki have combined forces on ANKOKU KAIJU would be a misnomer. Accurately stated, it’s the other way around. In other words: it’s a contingency of universal forces that has combined them. To experience their sublimation, even by proxy of recording, is to understand the chemical nature of their interaction. Yamaki’s approach to the kit is holistic, scaling a wide range of topographies in search of the beacon that Laswell selectively obfuscates and reveals by and through his improvisational haze. Whether riding an ethereal groove or sliding into newly excavated ruins of atmospheric history, this duo proves that going with the flow is more a matter of spirit than of mind or body. Over the course of a single 36-minute track, recorded live at The Stone on April 16, 2016, impulses that originated galaxies away feel as intimate as the beating heart. Achievement of such fine balance between signal and reception is no small task, but in this context emerges as an organic consequence of their sound.

Laswell’s distortions key highlight the physiological underpinnings of this music. Through them is sung the chaotic symphony of neurons and other intangible compulsions that make up any living organism. By tracing fear to its roots in love, he undoes the unnecessity of antagonism that fuels so much of today’s violent reaping. In its place, he and Yamaki tout death as beginning and not end, and express music as the clearest portal from which to draw such knowledge. To hear it, then, is to feel the interconnectedness of self with all creation. Yamaki’s frenetic dances drive home this point repeatedly throughout the set, finding in every thump of his kick drum a mantra’s worth of salutation. He’s not merely taking listeners on a journey, but turning listeners into the journey itself.

At times, the duo moves like two arms sprouting from a single body; at others, a binary star examining its own gravitational field. In either state, their dialogic relationship is a supernova spreading its language across the palimpsest of the universe. The result is a transformation of thought into action, of silence into sound, of contemplation into enlightenment. There’s no middle ground to be trodden; only a harmony of environmental extremes.

Although the album’s title translates from the Japanese as “Creature of Darkness,” there’s nothing sinister going on. If anything, the album is life-affirming and exceptionally rooted in the past. Every given moment is emboldened by the artists’ deference to all that came before, which by their evocations grafts wings of resurrection.