In The Midnight Disease, neurologist-writer Alice Flaherty theorizes that the temporal lobe may have played a large role in the history of creativity. Among the tendencies that can arise among highly creative people with unusual temporal-lobe processing is to have a grand, quasi-religious sense of the moment, and to attach great significance to the ordinary things and events around them.

Whether or not Masayoshi Urabe is of a brain with Flaherty�s creative types, he is surely of a mind with them. His Flag of midsummer revels in immediacy. Besides featuring the pregnant pauses around which he is well known for structuring his solo playing, this CD constantly reminds the listener of the space in which the music was performed. The intimacy of the recording captures Urabe�s breathing and the shuffling of his feet. One can practically hear the shape of the room. And the cicada-like insects outside of the space might deserve a personnel listing in the liner notes.

Urabe plays a number of incidental instruments on the CD, including chains, metal joints, bells, and accordion. However, most of his musical exploration during the first track � a forty-eight minute solo piece � is devoted to the alto saxophone.

Urabe is an original voice on the instrument, although in his general attack and phrasing he invites ready comparison to shakuhachi flautists like Philip Gelb. He employs a breathy tone, letting the natural timbres of the reed and metal speak almost with their own will. Although he does not invite comparison to many other alto players, some of Anthony Braxton�s open tempo works in his extensive solo ouvre occasionally come to mind. Urabe also meditates here and there on more extreme alto tones, an area in which Luc Houtkamp worked on his album The Art of Erasure.

The other track on the CD gives a glimpse of Urabe�s skill at collaborating with another player. In this eight minute piece, Urabe and Kiyoharu Kuwayama rattle, clank and plink their way among various percussive objects, and interweave breathy phrases on harmonica, accordion and flute. An organic music emerges, one that shares the aesthetic of the �little instrument� pieces of the AACM.

In all, this is a recording that demands attention in order to be appreciated. One should be prepared to become absorbed in the musicians� sense of time and place, as attentive listeners will be easily transported there.