There's something curious happening on "Nemutte," the sophomore album by Tokyo-based instrumental trio Kafka's Ibiki. When it performs live, the group specializes in long, patiently evolving improvisations that occupy a liminal zone between jazz, ambient, minimalism and experimental rock.
One such performance, at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo, was captured on the band's engrossing debut album from 2014, "Okite" ("Wake Up"). If you were to leave "Nemutte" ("Go to Sleep") playing in the background while doing something else, you might mistake it for more of the same. But closer listening reveals a hive of sonic activity that would be all but impossible for the group to achieve in real-time.
In fact, the album is a canny composite, stitched together from studio improvisations by Kafka's Ibiki's in-house producer, multi-instrumentalist Jim O'Rourke. So radically did he rework the material that his band mates, keyboardist Eiko Ishibashi and drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, say they didn't even recognize themselves at first.