Friday, April 7, 2023

Sunbirds - 1973 - Zagara

Sunbirds
1973
Zagara




01. My Dear Groovin
02. I Don't Need
03. African Sun
04. Fire Dance
05. Homecoming
06. Ocean Song
07. Stillpointing
08. Zagara

Ferdinand Povel/ fl
Leczek Zadlo/ fl
Lucas Costa/ gtr
Rafael Weber/ gtr
Fritz Pauer/ p
Jimmy Woode/ dbl b
Ron Carter/ dbl.b
Norman Tolbert/ perc,
Klaus Weiss/ dr



Originally released in 1973, as this was the short-lived jazz / fusion collective's second and final lp. About as good as their first self-titled record (see my review) also reissued by the Garden Of Delights label. Tunes here that I liked the most were the -almost- ethnic-sounding "Fire Dance", the laid-back "Homecoming", the well-received "My Dear Groovin" and the eleven-minute [somewhat inventive, one might say] "African Sun" with some really great flute playing featured. Might possibly appeal to of Epidaurus, Can or Pierre Moerlen's Gong. Also available on vinyl lp from Garden Of Delights.

Sunbirds - 1971 - Sunbirds

Sunbirds
1971
Sunbirds



01. Sunbirds
02. Sunshine
03. Kwaeli
04. Spanish Sun
05. Blues For D.S.
06. Sunrise
07. Fire Dance

Ferdinand Povel: Flute
Philip Catherine: Guitar
Fritz Pauer: Electric Piano
Jimmy Woode: Bass
Juan Romero: Percussion
Klaus Weiss: Drums



Based out of Germany in the early seventies this Jazz / Rock / Fusion band released two albums,this being the debut. Love the album cover as well. While these guys were based out of Munich, Germany it should be noted that this was a multi-national band with a Dutch flautist, American bassist and the guitarist from Belgium. It should also be noted that these guys were all seasoned players, all having played in important bands or projects before this. Most were close to 30 years of age when this album was recorded while the American bassist Jimmy Woode was over 40 years of age. Jimmy by the way played piano and trombone before switching to bass and played in Duke Ellington's big band from 1955- 1959. He also played with Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespi and Charlie Parker amongst others. In the book "The Crack In The Cosmic Egg" they had this to say about the SUNBIRDS : "On their debut "Sunbirds" they made a dreamy, yet powerful fusion with an abundance of solos, extensively featuring Belgian guitarist Philip Catherine, and smooth jazz keys from Fritz Pauer, feeling like a spacey EMBRYO cum Miles Davis. It's one of the great timeless fusion albums of the era that really gets the balance right, even when some of the tunes are so catchy that they linger in the mind long after".

"Kwaeli" has a relaxed beat with bass and flute helping out. Electric piano comes in as the tempo keeps picking up and slowing down. So good ! "Sunrise" sounds amzing as the flute plays over top. Crisp drumming as the organ comes and goes. "Spanish Sun" is mellow with flute and bass. It starts to pick up before 2 minutes as a beat comes in then guitar. Great sound ! The guitar stands out before 3 1/2 minutes then the electric piano comes to the fore. It's building.It settles back before 10 minutes to end it.

"Sunshine" is uptempo as the flute plays over top. Nice bass too. The organ replaces the flute and rips it up. The flute is back before 3 minutes. The guitar leads for a while then the flute is back to end it. "Sunbrids" has some atmosphere to start. A relaxing soundscape takes over around 2 minutes. The guitar leads after 3 1/2 minutes then it's the electric piano's turn. Drums dominate after 8 1/2 minutes. "Blues For DS" is groovy baby ! The flute plays over top as the bass,drums and guitar lead the way. Distorted keys before 2 minutes then the flute returns followed by electric piano.

You'll notice the word "sun" in three of the five song titles as well as in the band's name. Well it's because most of the songs they were creating were in E-minor or E-major and E is the so-called sun note in esotericism. Man I like this album, especially the electric piano. Amazing stuff !

Surely the German equivalent to Soft Machine - and in a very good way - teutonic sextet Sunbirds debut album should seriously excite jazz fans who like a bit of the exciting 1970's and furiously inventive fusion movement. Released in 1971 and featuring a line-up consisting of four different nationalities overall - Philip Catherine(guitar), Ferdinand Povel(flute), Fritz Pauer(keyboards), Jimmy Woode(bass), Juan Romero(percussion) and Klaus Weisse(drums) - this impressively-played, mystically-potent psychedelic opus finds the musicians firing-up electric jazz and oddball krautrock invention into a densely cosmic mixture that stretches across the bulk of albums six excellent tracks, colouring each-and-every with a slick, neon-lit fluidity that lights up the complex passages and quicksilver timing There are of course lighter moments, with opening number 'Sunbirds' exhibiting a more conventional streak and slight big-band-bent, yet for most this is very much Soft Machine- meets-Miles Davis 1969 to 1975 'electric' period-meets-Embryo-meets-German underground- of-the-late-sixties. So, highly recommended then. Go Listen. Now.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Arcana - 1997 - Arc of the Testimony

Arcana
1997
Arc of the Testimony




01. Black Money (4:17) *
02. Gone Tomorrow (9:39)
03. Illuminator (6:07)
04. Into the Circle (9:27)
05. Returning (4:30)
06. Calling Out the Blue Light (6:38)
07. Circles of Hell (7:15)
08. Wheeless on a Dark River (4:29)
09. The Earth Below (5:30)

* Bonus track on 2018 and 2021 reissues

Bill Laswell / basses, electronics, producer
Tony Williams / drums

With:
Pharoah Sanders / tenor saxophone (2,7)
Buckethead / guitar (3,5,7,9)
Nicky Skopelitis / guitar (2-8)
Graham Haynes / cornet (2,4)
Peter Apfelbaum / tenor saxophone (1)
Byard Lancaster / alto saxophone, bass clarinet (4,6)


Maybe the heaviest, sickest record I've ever heard, but this is absolutely *not* heavy metal or any other genre known for heaviness. It is a truly genreless work of such distinction and originality that I can only hope to give a tiny hint of its gravity and reality in these casual comments.

At the very least I can identify some of the parts here. Ultimately, however, the whole is a mystery that resides in the mind of Bill Laswell. At the top of the parts list, the drumming is by Tony Williams (in one of his final recording sessions before his death) and it's basically his classic sound of pounding the living shit out of his drumkit with insane virtuosity and nimbleness, pure Tony Williams drumkit shred. This goes a long way toward accounting for the heaviness of this music. Just the drumming alone is a heavy and sick wonder to behold. Listening to this reminds me there was only and will only ever be one person who can make a drumkit sound like this, the teenager who got hired by Miles Davis during his most advanced period and went on to reinvent his instrument. If there was ever a truly bad-ass motherfucker, it's Tony Williams. Behold. I'm not a Williams expert, but this might actually be the heaviest shit he ever laid down short of the original Lifetime stuff. In an interview, Laswell refers to the "velocity, force, and aggression" of Williams' playing in these sessions and it's in a totally different league than the work Williams had been doing toward the end of his career, not to discount the classic Jonas Hellborg album The Word.

Another reasonably easy-to-describe ingredient is the sick sick sick shredding guitars of Buckethead and Nicky Skopelitis. These guys have laid down hours of sick shit over the years and this is totally uncompromised, over-the-top speed explosions and piercing tones. It's not relentless shredding, though, but rather short episodes of hair-raising extremes. And they do a lot of slower, textural, melodic stuff as part of the shifting web of sound.

There are moments when the drums and guitar are both exploding in such a powerful way it feels like the sky is opening up and God is doing that whole dark, cataclysmic "the time has come for my power to be known" geo-pyscho-drama embedded in the theatrical imagery of Judeo-Christian mythology and memetically known to myself and virtually any other inhabitant of Western culture. It's just huge. Cataclysmic. Cosmic. It makes me wanna push the volume knob higher and fall to my knees in worship of the gods of power-fusion sound-ritual-frenzy-orgy-meditation. Sound-worship. It's a religious experience.

If listening to other peaks in the history of spiritually intense extreme-high-octane electric devotional music like Mahavishnu Orchestra is like being attacked by a tiger for a few minutes, this is more like being suddenly squeezed by the trunk of a placid mastodon, lifted to the sky, slammed to the ground, and then stepped on. Needless to say, it's, uh... visceral. But why "placid"? Hmm, it must be all the synth/sampler textures on the record.

Back to the parts list. You've got free jazz saxophone legends Pharoah Sanders and Byard Lancaster (who also plugs in some very fine low-toned clarinet musing) going way out in a few sections, playing fire music on the summit of an active volcano. But this is not some kind of drum/guitar/sax/etc noise blowout. The intensity ebbs and flows and solo passages have a space in the mix that makes them *count*.

You've also got trumpeter Graham Haynes in there adding to the timbres and textures that swirl around, and you've got Bill Laswell laying down throbbing, melodic bass guitar lines, offering more conventional instrumentalism than typical for his contributions to recordings.

All this cosmic fury is embedded in layers of dreamy, drifting, melancholy, slow ambient electro-acoustic and electronic music that would turn a lot of ears in its own right. You've got synths, Laswell's textural, processed bass guitar stuff, etc. Major vibe action. This description suggests something pretty cheesy, I know, but this is the real deal, not wallpaper music.

I think one of the deepest reasons for the effect of this record is the way the more relaxed, ambient stuff is balanced with the sick, out shredding on drumkit, guitar, and saxophone.

Some other things that help include constantly shifting, inventive rhythms driven by Williams. My guess is that Laswell just had him go into a studio and play the the hottest solos he could muster, and then the music was built up around excerpts of that. The macro-scale/supra-sectional compositional structure transcends what you could possibly expect from any real-time performing ensemble.

And now we're getting to the heart of the matter, Bill Laswell's production. For all I know, he might be responsible for the inspired compositional maneuvers in weaving all these glorious parts together in just the right way, but one thing is clear: the man took great music and gave it a sound-manifestation that amplifies its power by a thousand-fold. Never have I heard a drumkit sound so HUGE, so sonically overwhelming coming out of speakers--for better or worse, it even sounds slightly distorted. Laswell pushed the envelope of sonic experience here. In fact, whatever he did blending the different layers of bass guitar, guitar, synths, etc makes the drumkit sound more powerful than I could imagine any drumkit sounding if I were standing next to it.

I don't call myself a Laswell fan--most of his stuff just doesn't excite me as anything more than background music and when I hear about stuff with him I tend to have a <yawn> "whatever" reaction--but between this and a large handful of other achievements, the man deserves to be called a genius. I'm talking about his role as a concrete hands-on sound-organizer and mad scientist impresario here, not as an instrumentalist, although he does automatically go in the history books for playing on Massacre's Killing Time, the holy grail of the Downtown oeuvre, and has done a good share of other ass-kicking along those lines over the years.

The total sound package he created here is just miraculous and every time I play this album it's a profound, gripping experience that makes me think of this in a category of its own. It helps that I like overdriven fusion and Buckethead shred. It helps that I can dig electric Miles at its nastiest. It helps that I'm a big free jazz fan.

It also helps that I'm a King Crimson fan, because some of this music has the ghost of Starless and Red lurking in it. Interestingly to me, this latter aspect is part of its occasional similarity to the Bozzio/Levins/Stevens tour de force Black Light Syndrome, one of my special favorite records that also does something totally fresh and unexpected with aggressive fusion, although it doesn't in any way come close to the inscrutable, mysterious, cataclysmic heaviness of Arc. Compared to Arc, Black Light is polite and clean, but still quite visceral and powerful.

With my attempts to convey the transcendental intensity of this album, I haven't given enough hints of another big part of the story, the fact that this record is flat-out beautiful. I mean, in some conventional pitch-structure way that I wouldn't know how to talk about any better than saying "beautiful" and really meaning it.

Arc of Testimony is one of the last recordings to feature legendary drummer Tony Williams, and its bold, experimental textures are a fitting epitaph to his career. Arcana was formed by bassist/producer Bill Laswell with the intention of exploring the outer reaches of fusion, ambient and free jazz. Like the group's debut, Last Wave (released only in Japan), Arc of the Testimony is a freewheeling, unpredictable blend of electronic and acoustic sounds. However, this record is even more adventurous, since it finds a common ground between improvisation and post-production studio trickery. All of the musicians -- Williams, Laswell, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, saxophonist Byard Lancaster, cornetist Graham Haynes, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis and guitarist Buckethead -- are open-minded and help push the music forward, resulting in a thoroughly involving, challenging listen.

Imagine Tony Williams, Bill Laswell, Pharoah Sanders, and Buckethead walk into a bar?
You don't have to.
This is oh my God intense instrumental music. Also Tony William's last album before he died.
Spacey jazz rock with a little metal seasoning. So synthymetaljazzrockfusion? Not well known but well worth getting to know.

Arcana - 1996 - The Last Wave

Arcana
1996 
The Last Wave




01. Broken Circle (11:04)
02. Cold Blast (8:17)
03. The Rattle of Bones (7:57)
04. Pearls and Transformation (16:27)
05. Tears of Astral Rain (8:06)
06. Transplant Wasteland (8:32)

Derek Bailey / guitar
Bill Laswell / bass
Tony Williams / drums

Recorded and mixed at Greenpoint Studio, Brooklyn, NY in April, 1995.



Saying who is best among great musicians is moot and subjective. Any landmark musician has strengths that are fact and styles that you like or don't.

Now, let me reverse my idiot self and say why Anthony Williams was the best jazz drummer. He had the flexibility and musicality of Max Roach, the rhythmic invention of Elvin Jones. The agility of King Crimson Mach '69's Mike Giles.

You wanna know who else you can compare Anthony Williams to? Sir Paul McCartney. Like Paul, Williams did things on his instrument that no one else could think of in a thousand years. Listen to some of William's improvisations. Who dreams of fills and random movements like that? One Mr. Anthony Williams

 have only told you one half, the other being that Williams was always looking for new, edgy music to play, and I have no doubt that if he had not died from medical malpractice in 1997, he would be doing jazz as hip to 2010 as he did to 1964, 1969, 1978, and 1997.

"Tragic" is an over used word in the death of those well known, but in William's case, it truly was tragic. The amount of music we all missed out on is impossible to calculate.

But if not that, we have this. Arcana was one of William's last projects with guitar player Derik Baily and bassist Bill Laswell. If the 1960s had its free jazz, Arcana is free jazz on the other end of the time machine, with musicians having lived past rock, funk and fusion,

This is almost completely free, but two things strike me as fascinating: the ability of older musicians to make music this fresh and with such a sharp edge, and the ability of them to make it completely as it happens. More than 1960s Coleman or Coltrane-the only other place you can find music this good and this free is Cecil Taylor--this is totally improvised: it is ALL about the interaction of the trio--there is virtually no writing here- and the results are simply miraculous, for free jazz of ANY era sounds from the trio of Derek Bailey on guitar, Bill Laswell on bass, and Tony Williams on drums -- a group of players we thought we'd never see together on record, but who join up surprisingly well on this sharp-edged set recorded during some of Laswell's most experimental years! Bill's clearly driving the train on this one -- as the record's filled with those dark turns and moody passages that his fuzzy freaky bass could turn out so well -- and his approach definitely pushes Bailey into more ferocious territory, which Williams is only happy to follow himself! Given that Tony's own work was relatively straight at the time, the set really returns him to his experimental roots -- but with a very different flavor than before.

Dark improvised free jazz session that will not reveal its harsh beauty to the listeners who cannot let go. Tony Williams is on top form here, and it's been a while. Too sad he left the building.

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Akira Sakata - 1990 - Mooko

Akira Sakata
1990
Mooko




01. Nitchimo Satchimo 6:30
02. Hieyashi Bushi 5:50
03. Wann Kann Ich Sie Wiedersehen? 4:38
04. Hitsujikai No Bansan 9:11
05. Kibaminzoku No Odori 7:45
06. Mooko 3:02

Alto Saxophone, Clarinet, Piano, Voice – Akira Sakata
Bass, Violin – Bill Laswell
Drums, Percussion, Shawm – Ronald Shannon Jackson

Recorded at Sorcerer Sound, New York, December 2 & 3, 1987.
Mixed at Quad Recording Studio, December 4 & 5, 1987.


Born in Kure-city, Hiroshima in 1945. Studied marine biology at Hiroshima university. Formed a group Saibo-bunretsu (Cell fission) in Tokyo in 1969, and was also performing with various free-jazz musicians. Joined Yamashita Yosuke Trio from 1972 till 1979. In 1980 he formed his trio and its three month tour in Japan elicited a great public response. Its performance during this period was released as a live album POCHI.

Besides the activity with his trio, he formed Wha-ha-ha,which gained much attention as a collective group of musicians with strong personality from different fields, and its debut album Shinutokiwa betsu created quite a sensation in the music world in Japan. In May he did two month tour in Europe with his regular trio. And in November he appeared in Berlin Jazz Festival 1981 with newly formed Sakata Orchestra which he formed with handpicked musicians. They were very successful in the Festival, which Lounge Lizards, James Blood Ulmer, Defunkt, Material, etc., also appeared. Its performance was recorded in the album Berlin-28.

In the beginning of 1982, he formed Sakata-Sextet with an original group structure which included two drummers and two base-guitarists. Its stimulus sound filled with modern feeling can be heard in the album Trauma. In 1985 he formed his quartet and at the same time reformed his orchestra as Sakata Akira & his Da-Da-Da Orchestra.

In 1986 he performed with Last Exit which was formed by Bill Laswell. This performance was recorded in Noise of Trouble/Last Exit Live in Tokyo. In 1988, he recorded Mooko with Bill Laswell and Ronald "Shannon" Jackson. This recording was released worldwide by Virgin Records.

In 1994, for one month in the summer he led and carried out a tour to Uzbekistan, Mongolia and China with Flying Mijinko Band formed by14 members from Japan, Africa and America. The performance on this tour was recorded and the CD Flying Mijinko Band/Central Asian Tour was produced by the Japan Foundation. In 1999 he produced a new style folk music concert The World Music Festival - August in Hiroshima centered with Flying Mijinko Band with Bill Laswell and others.

Now he works with his regular unit Harpacticoida, Sakata Akira "3" mii and also with Kesutoradamashi, by which he has been trying to combine different musicians freely. He has been working with a folk singer Hitoshi Komuro, a Wadaiko (Japanese drums) player Eitetsu Hayashi, a traditional Japanese folk singer Takio Itoh and so on, keeping an open mind to any music category. His latest work is Umi (La Mer)-Harpacticoida.

Also he has been well known as an essayist with a unique point of view and writing style. He even appeared in films and on stage as an actoras well. Recently, he is well acknowledged as an ardent student of "Mijinko" (a water flea) and his experience through breeding and observing Mijinko has been arousing many people's sympathy by his deep insight and witty talk into the nature.

In 1990, having grown in intensity of his interest to Mijinko, he organized Mijinko Club and he himself became its president. In 1992 he recorded the music for TV program, NHK Special "Nano Space" and this music was released as Nano Space Odyssey. In 1994 he produced The Mijinko Exhibition at Kasai Seaside Aquarium in Tokyo. In March 1996 he published a video The Universe of Mijinko(Sony Music Entertainment).

In May 2003, Sakata led his trio band "Sakata Akira mii" and performed in European cities of Dusseldorf and Paris. He was also engaged in documentary film making of [Shirakami no Yume] both as an actor and as the music composer. His years of study and ardent promotion activities on the Mijinko (water flea) won high recognition and was specially commended by The Plankton Society of Japan.

In February 2004, he recorded the CD "Akatombo (red dragonfly)" which is the first release from his trio "Sakata Akira mii". During the summer this year, he enjoyed acting again in the movie [Umore-gi] directed by director Kouhei Oguri. (released in June 2005).

In September 2004, the first CD of "Sakata Akira mii" was released from his own label Daphnia. In the same month, he joined DJ KRUSH to tour the US (NY and San Francisco), followed by Tohoku(northern Japan) in October and western Japan in November and December.

In April 2005, the performance titled "Sakata/O'Rourke Tokyo Session" at the live house Pitinn was publicly recorded, which will be released by Polyster in December. The annual domestic tour to Tohoku by "Sakata Akira mii" began in June, to be followed by the tours in Aomori and Hokkaido in September and October. Some other planned releases are first, the DVD titled [Mijinko no Shizukana Uchu (Tranquil World of Mijinko (water flea))](with a special footage from his performance as an added bonus) to come in October, then the solo-recorded double album of [Hyakuhachi Bonnou (108 Desires)] to be on a sale from Ourai Records in December.

Mooko was the first installment of a short-lived "power trio" comprised of Japanese free saxophonist Akira Sakata, bassist Bill Laswell, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. At the time of this recording, the latter two were deeply into their Last Exit project, a band with whom Sakata sat in during their tour of Japan. This trio is a bit like a pared-down version of Last Exit, without the incendiary guitar work of Sonny Sharrock and with a somewhat more compositional bent. The opening track, "Nitchimo Satchimo," for example, begins with a sprightly marching cadence before launching into improv. Midway through, however, the music suspends its momentum and Laswell enters with some deliciously slow and deadly funky bass for a few tantalizing moments before lurching back into the theme. About half of the pieces here are improvised and, generally, they don't work as well as the composed ones. Sakata doesn't have either the individual sound or the range of expression to really pull off free improv with great creativity, but given a loose structure, his playing acquires a heady confidence and swagger. Laswell and Jackson are well-meshed by this point and provide enough propulsion and groove to hold together any improv that threatens to meander. The closing cut gets into the sitar-based, dreamy territory that Laswell would explore more thoroughly on his own in bands like Material. At its best, Mooko is an exciting, powerful, and tight little band, capable of developing concentrated bursts of high energy; at other times, the inspiration is lacking. The disc is worth hearing, especially for Last Exit fans wanting to hear that band's rhythm team in a sparser context.

Monday, April 3, 2023

Ryuichi Sakamoto - 1980 - B-2 Unit

Ryuichi Sakamoto
1980
B-2 Unit



01. Differencia (2:06)
02. Thatness and Thereness (3:27)
03. Participation Mystique (6:40)
04. E-3A (4:46)
05. Iconic Storage (4:43)
06. Riot in Lagos (5:40)
07. Not the 6 O'Clock News (5:04)
08. The End of Europe (4:56)

Andy Partridge, Tadashi Kumihara, Kenji Omura, Ryuichi Sakamoto - musicians

All tunes composed and arranged by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Words written by Yoshitaka Goto and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Recorded at Studio "A" in Tokyo, Studio 80 and Air Studios in London.



A perfect, dark companion to Yellow Magic Orchestra's own fantastic Technodelic, B-2 Unit finds Sakamoto exploring a decidedly more experimental side of electronic music.

When listening to this now, it's important to recall how much painstaking programming went into creating this music. There were no DAW's, no Pro-Tools or Ableton, no modeling synthesizers and the only commercially available sampler was the 8-bit, insanely expensive and difficult Fairlight CMI. To sequence the synth / drum machine parts to get that 'precise' sound meant countless hours sitting at the Roland MC 8, a sequencer where every note and chord needed to be punched in manually. Having done something similar myself recently I can attest: as great as the end result is, the process is maddening.

When so much work goes into a record, you can guarantee the artist believes deeply in every track. Thusly, there are no weak tracks on B-2 Unit, only wild, expressive, experimental electronic pop music.

A huge criticism levied at electronic music, especially at the time, was that it was cold and soulless, lacking in emotional depth. Those things could definitely be true, plenty of artists certainly used this aspect to define their sound. Not so, Ryuichi Sakamoto. "Thatness and Thereness", for all it's melting electronic washes, is anchored by Sakamoto's excellent melodic chops, as pretty as any smooth jazz number.

But that's not the most on offer in B-2U. Opener "Differencia" must have shocked the shit out of the YMO faithful with it's dark aura and skewered drum machine hiccuping all over the place. "Participation Mystique" continues this after the false comfort of "Thatness and Thereness" with pounding drums, distorted drone figure and a mutilated vocal that sounds like a whispering spectre.

"Iconic Storage" posits industrial instructional film music as dark pop while "Not the 6 O'Clock News" is just straight up industrial music, as uncompromising as anything coming out of England at the time. "E-3A" pits Sakamoto's synth prowess against dub producer Dennis "Blackbeard" Bovell. Bovell, no stranger to non reggae musics, having produced post-punk noise funksters The Pop Group's debut Y and The Slits Cut, approaches the track with a fine tuned sense of rhythm, weaving seemlessly in and out of the hi-q bass squirts and clicks.

"Riot in Lagos" is the closest B-2U gets to YMO's electro pop but still a bit "off", though it certainly clues the listener to the general direction that that band would take less than a year later on Technodelic.

Still sounds fresh!

Ryuichi Sakamoto & The Kakutougi Session - 1979 - Summer Nerves

Ryuichi Sakamoto & The Kakutougi Session
1979
Summer Nerves



01. Summer Nerves (4:12)
02. You're Friend to Me (5:03)
03. Sleep on My Baby (5:12)
04. Theme for "Kakutougi" (6:23)
05. Gonna Go to I Colony (4:42)
06. Time Trip (4:17)
07. Sweet Illusion (6:34)
08. Neuronian Network (4:09)

Ryuichi Sakamoto - keyboards
Yukihiro Takahashi - drums
Kazumi Watanabe (#3,7) - guitar
Kenji Omura (#3,7) - guitar
Masaki Matsubara (#4,5) - guitar
Shigeru Suzuki (#1,2,4,6) - guitar
Ray Ohara - bass (#1-4,6,7) - guitar
Motoya Hamaguchi (#1,2,4,6) - percussion
Pecker (#3,5,7) - percussion
Mabumi Yamaguchi - saxophone (#1)
Akiko Yano - backing vocals (#3)

Recorded at CBS/Sony studio, Tokyo.





A set that's maybe a bit more straightforward than some of the other work from Ryuichi Sakamoto from the time -- warmly crafted with lots of jazzy touches, thanks to work on the record from Katuougi Session! The approach is almost city pop, but there's still some of the quirkier touches we love in Sakamoto's music -- as you might guess from the cover -- including a bit of vocoder, and a relatively understated way that often has the lyrics stepping around right down in the grooves!

A distinct departure from the rest of Sakamoto's solo career and a fun one at that. On this release he delves into a mix of reggae, disco and a little bit of jazz fusion as well as his usual brand of weird electronic music. All of it comes together here to make 8 tracks of zany city pop songs that aren't very memorable but are entertaining enough to keep me engaged while listening. Overall the album has a nice summery/tropical feel.

Yellow Magic Orchestra - 1978 - Yellow Magic Orchestra

Yellow Magic Orchestra
1978 
Yellow Magic Orchestra



01. Computer Game "Theme From The Circus"
02. Firecracker
03. Simoon
04. Cosmic Surfin'
05. Computer Game "Theme From The Invader"
06. Tong Poo
07. La Femme Chinoise
08. Bridge Over Troubled Music
09. Mad Pierrot
10. Acrobat

There are two mixes of this album that have been released and reissued in several countries over the years: the original Japanese version and a remixed US version.

The cover art featuring a woman holding a fan denotes the US mix, and most versions of it end with the song “Mad Pierrot” instead of “Acrobat.”


Drums, Percussion, Electronics, Vocals – Yukihiro Takahashi
Keyboards, Electronics, Percussion, Orchestrated By – Ryuichi Sakamoto
Bass, Electronics, Keyboards – Harry Hosono



This is the story of YMO’s formation in the late 1970s, in brief: Hosono, already a musical force in Japan after leading the influential rock group Happy End, assembles a crew of session players for his next solo album. This group includes a friend from college named Yukihiro Takahashi, as well as an up-and-coming arranger named Ryuichi Sakamoto. The jazzy exotica masterwork Paraiso, credited to Harry Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band, is released in 1978. That same year, Hosono asks Takahashi and Sakamoto if they want to start a new project together. He proposes the new band as a “stepping stone” to greater heights in each of their solo careers. Takahashi agrees; after some initial hesitation, Sakamoto does, too.

Super Nintendo Disco music. Ok review done. But seriously this couldn't sound more like that if it tried! But hey that's not just a goofy pop culture reference, in fact it partly states the immense influence these dudes have had in their homeland of Japan. If you've like partook at all in Japanese pop culture products, namely stuff from the 80's or 90's ...listening to this will be a bizarre revelation. All those fighting robot cartoon show themes? All those Nintendo soundtracks? You will HEAR them here! This isn't just some random nerd talk, this is very very apparent! The influence of YMO over Japan is audible as fuck to the point of it being a bit scary. Also it's really really good. That too is a thing. So I've discussed a lot on the unique personality of early electronically driven acts, how personality often separates the titans from the smaller acts. Kraftwerk's personality as precise robots is famed, Gary Numan's organic rhythm sections backing his cybernetic moodscapes is his claim to fame, Japan are the ones who basically embodied the New Romantic concept most perfectly and wholly...so that brings us here to Yellow Magic Orchestra. Do they stand out amid this international crowd? The answer is....EXTREMELY. In fact if the whole of these groups is placed together YMO stands the most out! How? Well they decided that as much as they admired the cold works of Kraftwerk that influenced them? Ultimately they couldn't abide by the cold dark aspect. Japan and Germany often get talked up as these very efficient professional cultures, taking that to it's extreme you can start seeing YMO as Japan's natural equivalent of Kraftwerk. Which works until you actually hear them, and if Japan and Germany share that precision of culture....well Japan's natural tendency to cut loose and have strange fun explains the difference. Germany lacks this very much so! YMO is fun with a capital F and then some, I mentioned disco in the opening sentence right? Well shit, these are very very dance oriented songs! Strong disco beats underly the self-consciously cliche asiatic music above. The comparisons can actually be drawn perhaps more strongly to early Italo-Disco at points (Europe stores all it's fun having along the Mediterranean sadly for Germany), but it's much more interesting than just that. The arrangements involve lots of video gamey sounding (think Pong) sound effects and characteristics, early chiptunes work being a major influence. Mixed in is what I can only describe as a sort of jazzy lounge like attitude buried somewhere deep but central in things, giving everything a more swanky feel even at it's most blippity bleepity silliness. Oh! And asiatic! Right! The best song (and most famous here) Firecracker is a sort of interpolation partly of an old orientalist track by famed musical orientalist Martin Denny. The guy who made all those old 50's sounding "ethnic" musics that sound like cheesy white bread takes on exotic musics. There's a sort of genius post-modern comedy in an actual Japanese act taking that cliche "asian" melody and using it as a backbone for a futuristic pop masterpiece like their version of Firecracker. Could write a whole essay on it! Oh and the best part of the song isn't Martin Denny's melody, it's the repetitive din-din-din dindindin-din-din electro melody coursing through the whole song. Your brain will not be free of it, so beware. And yes yes, all of this sounds like it was made by Super Nintendos. Probably because Koji Kondo and those guys were so clearly indebted to YMO. Tons and tons of fun here, the product of endless directioned influence to so it's super interesting on top of that. What a wonderful electronic stew this is.

Their first record as YMO, they had worked together on Haruomi Hosono's record Paraiso previously. Charming and bouncy vintage electronic music with lots of undertones. Not unlike a more playful Mensch-Maschine era Kraftwerk had they been on ZE Records and heavy on computer game fx sounds. It sounds like a one-off effort, they would develope their group identity on the more assured "Solid State Survivor". But it is exactly this otherworldly quality and quirkiness (also featured on the early ZE records) that i like.

The rereleased CD features the original and the american version, which is remixed and has a slightly different tracklist. The american remix sounds more punchy, maybe to appeal to the Paradise Garage crowd. The original sounds a bit more atmospheric, and thus is my favourite.

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Ryuichi Sakamoto - 1978 - Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto
1978
Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto




01. Thousand Knives (9:35)
02. Island of Woods (9:51)
03. Grasshoppers (5:16)
04. Das Neue Japanische Elektronische Volkslied (8:06)
05. Plastic Bamboo (6:31)
06. The End of Asia (06:23)

Recorded at Nippon Columbia Studios 1, 2 & 4, Tokyo on April 10 - July 27, 1978.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Synthesizers, Drums, acoustic piano, marimba
Hideki Matsutake - computer operation, synthesizer programming assistance
Harry Hosono - finger cymbals (#1 )
Kazumi Watanabe - Alembic guitar solo (#1,6) & rhythm (#6)
Motoya Hamaguchi - Syn-Drum solo (#1), Brazilian bird whistles (#2)
Yuji Takahashi - acoustic piano duo w. RS (#3)
Tatsuro Yamashita - castanets (#4)
Pecker - Syn-Drum solo (#5)




Ryuichi Sakamoto's first solo album appeared before he formed Yellow Magic Orchestra in late 1978, after the young keyboardist had earned his MA in music from Tokyo University. Six long instrumentals make up this CD, but apart from a taste for Asian-sounding synth lines, they hint at very little of what was to come in YMO. "Thousand Knives" is a long disco-lite jazzy workout with a very un-synthesized guitar solo by Kazumi Watanabe (who would later join YMO on tour and have his solo album produced by Sakamoto). Side two's "Da Neue Japanische Electronische Volkslied" and "The End of Asia" (later revamped in YMO) are closest to the new wave of Japanese electronic music that he would spawn. "Island of Woods" and "Grasshoppers" trade in rhythm for sound landscapes, and the sort of cheeriness that would pop up later in Sakamoto's childrens movie scores. Harry Hosono turns up on one track, and generally the album is a pleasant, if unadventurous, listen.

This is the definition of progressive electronic. Predicts just about everything that's going to go on in the next 40 years of the genre before it even got started. Great melodies too. This is a must listen in my world

Harry Hosono and The Yellow Magic Band - 1978 - Paraiso

Harry Hosono and The Yellow Magic Band
1978
Paraiso



01. Tokio Rush (3:31)
02. Shimendoka (4:44)
03. Japanese Rhumba (3:34)
04. Asatoya Yunta (2:14)
05. Fujiyama Mama (2:49)
06. Femme Fatale (5:00)
07. Shambhala Signal (instrumental) (3:36)
08. Worry Beads (4:28)
09. Paraiso (Haraiso) (4:39)

Haruomi Hosono - bass, vocals, steelpan, marimba, percussion, synthesizer (Roland, Yamaha CP-30), electric piano, gong, whistle, electric guitar 
Shigeru Suzuki (#2,4) - electric guitar
Hirofumi Tokutake (#6) - electric guitar
Tatsuo Hayashi (#1-4,8,9) - drums
Yukihiro Takahashi (#6) - drums
Hiroshi Sato (#1-4,8,9) - synthesizer
Ryuichi Sakamoto (#1,6,9) - synthesizer, piano
Motoya Hamaguchi (#4,6) - percussion
Nobu Saito (#1-3,8,9) - percussion
Masahiro Takekawa - violin (#8)
Teave Kamayatsu - vocals (#3 )
Taeko Onuki - backing vocals/choir (#1,8)
Tokyo Shyness Boys - backing vocals/choir (#1,3)
Hiroshi Kamayatsu - backing vocals/choir (#3)
Tomako Kawada - backing vocals/choir (#3, 4)

All songs written and composed by Haruomi Hosono, except "Japanese Rhumba" by Glenn Miller; "Asatoya Yunta", a traditional Okinawan song and "Fujiyama Mama", written by Earl Burrows with lyrics translated by Seiichi Ida and additional lyrics written by Hosono.

Recorded at Studio "A", Shibaura, Tokyo, December 1977 to January 1978.


An absolutely perfect–if bizzare–summer album. The first track, “Tokyo Rush”, plunks you right into a ripping blues piano and harmonica riff (not to mention a honking clown horn) which results in a cartoony anthem perfect for driving your friends through the city on the way to the beach. It’s hard not to imagine a gorgeous cloudless day, with your feet up on the dash and the wind in your hair–a mood which pops up throughout this album’s inescapable sunniness (especially on tracks like the steel drum-heavy “Shimendoka” and the beachily syncopated “Worry Beads”). Hosono sings in both English and Japanese throughout the album, and on “Fujiyama Mama” comically falsettos his way through a swingin’ sixties-style duet with himself.

For all its silliness, however, there’s an undeniable oddity to these songs that reveals itself the more you get to know them. This record is a remarkable blend of styles, characteristic of Hosono’s musical omnivorousness. He takes Western influences and runs with them, blending funk, jazz, folk, reggae and blues with distinctly Japanese musical tradition (more overt on tracks such as the traditional Okinawan song “Asatoya Yunta”). There is a tongue-in-cheek attitude to Paraiso, especially considering its release in the decade following the rise of the island fantasy sound of lounge exotica. On tracks such as “Femme Fatale”, Hosono distinctly nods to the lounge tradition, but with a twist–the tropical bird sounds in the background are overly compressed, hinting at a canned kind of paradise. On other tracks, however, he leans into real “island” music, flipping the appropriative exotica stereotype on its head. “Shambhala Signal” demonstrates Hosono’s pioneering electronica sound as applied to the ancient Indonesian tradition of Gamelan music, an influence that sticks with him and the rest of Yellow Magic Orchestra throughout their career. It’s interesting to note that this record marks the first time Hosono recorded a track with a synthesizer since he began his career in 1969, especially considering he was later known as a pioneer of electronica.

Only on the final title track does the record give in to the psychedelia bleeding at the edges of the album’s vision–but only for a minute. Soon, Harry Hosono and The Yellow Magic Band are back at the perfectly tropical pop that makes this record so indelibly listenable. This record’s wonkiness and odd melange of styles are nothing short of charming, and there is a subversive peculiarity to it that only grows the more you listen. It makes for a casually genius album that seems effortless in its inventiveness, and begs to be the soundtrack of your summer.

Following Tropical Dandy (1975) and Bon Voyage Co. (1976), Paraiso is the concluding saga in his "Tropical Trilogy." The album can be seen as a turning point in Haruomi Hosono's career, having been newly signed to Alfa Records by label head Kunihiko Murai. Hosono expands on the Van Dyke Parks-inspired tropical funk styles explored in the previous albums, and arrives at a captivating fusion sound that's at times equally earthy and exotic. Hinting at the breakthrough sounds he would perfect with Yellow Magic Orchestra, Hosono uses synthesizers to provide otherworldly textures and a spiritual undertone to songs like "Femme Fatale" and the title track. On his Caribbean-style take on the Okinawan folk song "Asatoya Yunta" and the synth/gamelan workout of "Shambhala Signal," Hosono takes traditional melodies and mixes them into his own inimitable stew. Featuring a host of well-known musicians like Taeko Ohnuki, Hiroshi Sato and his future bandmates Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Paraiso perfectly encapsulates Hosono's eccentric worldview that has shaped his solo career, right before his techno-pop project would blast him into the stratosphere.

Toshiyuki Tsuchitori & Ryuichi Sakamoto - 1975 - Disappointment - Hateruma

Toshiyuki Tsuchitori & Ryuichi Sakamoto
1975
Disappointment - Hateruma




01. Aya (Tsuchitori-Sakamoto) - 20:16
02. Utsuwa no Naka (Tsuchitori-Sakamoto) - 6:30
03. Musique Differencielle 1° (Tsuchitori-Sakamoto) - 14:07
04. Musique Differencielle 2° ( Sakamoto - 6:11

Recorded at Lisrec Studio and Gyoen Music Studio, Tokyo, August and September 1975

Toshiyuki Tsuchitori, Ryuichi Sakamoto - drums, gong, grand piano, cymbal, bells, wood block, marimba, glockenspiel, thumb piano, bongos, EMS synthesizer, voice, temple block, bamboo clutters




Ryuichi Sakamoto was not a man cut out to be a pop star. As a teenager, he liked the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but his abiding passion was New York’s underground avant garde art scene – Joseph Beuys, Fluxus, Andy Warhol – and its accompanying experimental music: he was fond of pointing out to interviewers that he was born the year that John Cage composed 4’33. At university, he studied the work of modern composers Boulez, Stockhausen and Ligeti; he had a particular interest in the challenging electronic compositions of Iannis Xenakis. The first album to bear Sakamoto’s name, 1975’s Disappointment/Hateruma, was a collaboration with percussionist Toshiyuki Tsuchitori that consisted entirely of free improv. If he was going to have a role in the Japanese pop world at all, it was in the background, using his keyboard skills and interest in the fast-developing world of synthesisers to find employment as a session musician.

But a pop star was exactly what Sakamoto became, at least for a time. A 1978 session for singer Haruomi Hosono led to the suggestion that they should form a band with drummer Yukihiro Takahashi. Yellow Magic Orchestra went on to become both the biggest band in Japan – inspiring a degree of paparazzi attention and screaming fervour among fans that Sakamoto seems to have loathed every minute of – and the first Japanese artists to find more than novelty or cult status in the west.

Yellow Magic Orchestra were successful, but they were groundbreaking too. The convenient shorthand was that they were the Japanese Kraftwerk, although in truth, YMO didn’t really sound like Kraftwerk at all. Alongside the synthesizers, they used guitars, bass and acoustic drums. They were more straightforwardly aligned to disco: their debut album even featured an electronic version of the deathless “ooah ooah” whoop from the Michael Zager Band’s Let’s All Chant. You could detect the influence of jazz fusion and, later, the UK’s ongoing ska revival. Like Throbbing Gristle, they appeared fascinated by the kitschy 1950s exotica of Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, which had featured traditional Japanese instruments and quasi-“oriental” melodies; Yellow Magic Orchestra’s biggest international hit was a version of Denny’s 1959 track Firecracker.

Equally, you could see why the Kraftwerk comparison stuck. Both bands shared an obsession with technology – Yellow Magic Orchestra were pioneering in their use of sequencers and samplers and they introduced the world to the sound of the Roland TR-808 drum machine – and a belief that being cutting-edge experimentalists didn’t preclude them from writing fantastic pop songs. The Sakamoto-penned Behind the Mask, from 1979’s Solid State Survivor, was covered by Michael Jackson, ostensibly for inclusion on Thriller, although it was dropped from the final tracklisting; it was eventually turned into a UK hit by, of all people, Eric Clapton.

Both YMO and Kraftwerk were interested in the detournement of Anglo-American pop: just as Kraftwerk borrowed from the Beach Boys on Autobahn, so YMO covered the Beatles’ Day Tripper and Archie Bell and the Drells’ Tighten Up, the latter in cartoonish Japanese accents. They also shared a dry sense of humour, which in Yellow Magic Orchestra’s case usually fixated on western prejudices and fears about east Asians. On the cover of Solid State Survivor, they dressed in red Mao suits, enjoying a drink with an effigy of the late dictator. While the US fretted about an influx of Japanese cars and technology damaging their economy, 1980’s X∞Multiplies featured a series of sketches, one featuring a sinister Japanese businessman signing a contract, another featuring an American who realises his Japanese host can’t understand English and lets rip with a torrent of racist abuse: “The Japanese are pigs, yellow monkeys, they have small cocks and short legs.” As a moral panic erupted over the deleterious and addictive effect of the Taito Corporation’s Space Invaders games, Yellow Magic Orchestra’s records literally sounded like arcade games: their eponymous debut album was packed with interludes featuring their bleeping noises and tinny Game Over death marches.

And, like Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra proved vastly influential – or rather, it took the rest of the world a little while to catch up: there was something telling about the fact that Solid State Survivor wasn’t released in the UK until 1982, at the height of the synth-pop wave that YMO had presaged. By then, their music had found its way into the collections of DJs and producers in New York’s burgeoning hip-hop scene – they were apparently astonished when the audience on Soul Train began breakdancing when they performed Computer Games – although it was a track from one of the solo albums Sakamoto had begun releasing concurrent with his career in YMO that had the biggest long-term impact. Riot in Lagos, from 1980’s B-2 Unit, had been recorded in London with reggae producer Dennis Bovell, and was apparently inspired by the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti. It remains an astonishingly timeless and effervescent piece of electronica: if you didn’t know it and were told it was released last month, rather than 42 years ago, you’d believe it. Abstract but funky, it cast a considerable shadow over dance music: it was big club hit on release, helped shape the sound of electro and turned the head of hip-hop producers including Kurtis Mantronik. Drum n’ bass producers Foul Play sampled it, and you can hear its influence in the music of 90s electronic luminaries Aphex Twin and Autechre.

Yellow Magic Orchestra split in 1983. If Sakamoto had left it at that and returned to modern classical music, he would already have earned himself a place among the era’s greatest pop innovators. But with the release of Nagisa Ōshima’s film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, in which he also starred, he began a career as a soundtrack composer that clearly suited his temperament far better than the Beatlemania-like scenes Yellow Magic Orchestra had provoked at home. It would lead him to work with Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodóvar, Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone, among others, and be showered with awards, including an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

But the vocal version of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’s haunting main theme, retitled Forbidden Colours, also cemented a partnership with former Japan vocalist David Sylvian that had begun with the 1982 single Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music. Along with Can’s Holger Czukay and experimental trumpeter Jon Hassell, he became part of Sylvian’s repertory company for a series of extraordinary albums that attempted to reimagine 80s pop in a more expansive, exploratory and pensive way.

They seemed to reflect Sakamoto’s own position within pop after Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sakamoto’s solo albums largely contained music that existed at one remove from whatever else was happening, in a space where he could follow his own path. On 1989’s Beauty and 1991’s Heartbeat, it sometimes seemed as if he was constructing his own brand of the exotica that had entranced YMO, blending eastern, western and African influences together, assembling eclectic and improbable guest lists that, on Beauty alone, included Youssou N’Dour, Robbie Robertson, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson and Prince protege Jill Jones.

It wasn’t as if Ryuichi Sakamoto needed to be at the centre of pop culture in person: thanks to sampling, the centre of pop culture was never that far from his music. In recent years, it’s been borrowed by the Weeknd, Justice, Burial, the Beastie Boys, Jennifer Lopez, Brandy and Freddie Gibbs.

In the late 70s, the other members of Yellow Magic Orchestra had called him the Professor, a jokey nickname that contrasted Sakamoto’s intellectual bearing with his unwanted role as the group’s main heart-throb. It was a title Sakamoto seemed to grow into more and more in his later years: recording minimalist albums with German artist Alva Noto, providing ambient scores for art installations, releasing live orchestral and solo piano recordings of his compositions. There are clips of Yellow Magic Orchestra in the 2017 documentary Coda, which showed Sakamoto returning to work following a diagnosis of throat cancer, but it’s still hard to square the young pop star who stares imperiously down from his apartment wall in a portrait by Andy Warhol with the man in his late 60s, learnedly discussing classical organ chorales, the purity of the sounds he recorded during a trip to the North Pole and whether a piano going out of tune represented “matter struggling to return to a natural state”.

The album Coda depicted him working on, async, was released in 2017. It combined Bach-inspired piano pieces with monumental drones, distorted synthesisers and ambient field recordings. The artists who lined up to remix its tracks came from the leftfield cutting-edge of electronic music: if you wanted evidence of how widespread Ryuichi Sakamoto’s influence was, the fact that his work was clearly an inspiration for the likes of Arca and Oneohtrix Point Never and had been sampled by Jennifer Lopez on a US No 1 single seems a reasonable place to start. Contemplating his mortality in 2017, Sakamoto said he wanted to make “music I won’t be ashamed to leave behind – meaningful work”. By any metric, he already had.

This is the most experimental and dissonant Sakamoto I've heard. Very Cage/Conlon Nancarrow influenced, wild piano and percussion. Challenging, but Sakamoto seems incapable of making an unpleasant album, so still fun to listen to. Not the best place to start, but a fascinating album for fans...