Eclipse has always been the most mysterious of the Takayanagi and New Direction records, originally issued in an edition of 100 copies, this reissue remasters the album from the original tapes to present the unique vision of improvising guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi and his band with Kenji Mori on alto sax, flute & recorder, Nobuyoshi Ino on bass and Hiroshi Yamazaki on drums.
Remastered from the original tapes by Elysian Masters, packaged in a heavy double tip-on gatefold jacket that pays tribute to the original handmade packaging and features a previously unseen studio photograph of Takayanagi by Tatsuo Minami.
UPC: 769791980945
Label: Black Editions Catalog ID: BE 014LP Squidco Product Code: 31714
Format: LP Condition: New Released: 2022 Country: USA Packaging: LP Recorded in Tokyo, Japan, on March 14th, 1975, by Mikio Aoki .
"Masayuki Takayanagi was one of the truly iconoclastic musicians to emerge from Japan, or anywhere else, in the 20th Century. Though he won acclaim in the 1950's and 60's as a master of the electric guitar and jazz improvisation, Takayanagi was a restless spirit, deeply engaged with the era's new movements in contemporary art, music, literature and philosophy. His work, beginning in the late 1960's placed him on the leading edge of these developments; he began expanding on the most radical elements of American and European free jazz, infusing them with the raw feedback and dissonance of electronic and avant-garde music. With his various "New Direction" groups, Takayanagi broke free of traditional structures and developed a new theory of music that embraced an aggressive and unrelenting style of playing that has remained almost completely unparalleled in its ferocity.
Of all the albums to be released during Takayanagi's lifetime, 1975's Eclipse was perhaps the most enigmatic and sought after. Released in an edition of only 100, it almost immediately disappeared and became a Holy Grail for Japanese connoisseurs of adventurous music, and rightly so. It's first side contained a two part realization of Takayanagi's "Gradually Projection" modality - a searching interplay between instruments- slowly emerging from a sparse open field and building with the tension of a looming thunder storm. The second side contains an epic performance of a "Mass Projection", a high energy, densely layered barrage of sound that in its 25 minutes, never once slackens its intensity. It would be another 31 years before this key album in Takayangi's oeuvre would finally have a (slightly) wider audience through a CD release by Japan's P.S.F. Records."-Black Editions
Remastered from the original tapes by Elysian Masters, packaged in a heavy double tip-on gatefold jacket that pays tribute to the original handmade packaging and features a previously unseen studio photograph of Takayanagi by Tatsuo Minami.