You-On - New Side

New Side is the debut album from You-On, the duo of pianist Masami Tomihisa and drummer Jim White. Recorded across three fully improvised sessions in 2024, it captures two intuitive players discovering a shared language in real time, with results so poised they barely sound like first meetings.

Tomihisa, a New York based pianist, composer and improviser, works largely at the electric piano here, her lines drifting and circling as White, best known for his work in the Dirty Three, shades and disrupts them with restless, painterly drumming. The eight pieces move between precise, otherworldly beauty and quiet tension, mixed, edited and sequenced by Guy Picciotto into a single flowing arc.

The name You-On joins two Japanese characters, one meaning to play or have fun, the other meaning sound, and that spirit of open exploration runs through every track.