"Another reissue from the company NoBusiness has arrived. This time with two musicians I do not initially know who is / where. Kaoru Abe plays all soprano saxophonics and Sabu Toyozumi covers the drums and the percussion. The recordings of these five strings were made in Minor, Kichijôji, and in Gaia, Hatsudai, Tokyo on July 7, 1978 (the first two stretches), and on January 13, the last three.

According to the internet, Abe was a major Japanese avant-garde saxophonist, who specially excelled in Alpha Saxophone. He was self-taught and started at a very young age. He played with drummer Milford Graves and guitarist Derek Bailey, as well as a number of Japanese musicians, especially in free-standing music. He died of a bromisoval overdose in 1978, causing an acute gastric perforation.

Sabu Toyozumi is one of the inovative freejazz musicians in Japan. He played with most of the major Japanese, free-improvising musicians, plus more from the Western countries, such as Derek Bailey, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Brotzmann Tom Cora, John Russell, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Sunny Murray and more.

At a time when it seems that most things are done within creative, improvised music, it's exciting to put on a record of musicians you've never heard before. And this time it was extra special, since the Internet has revealed that there are two of the truly influential Japanese musicians we are going to hear. I have heard a lot of music from the "country of the sun" in recent years, which has either been extremely noisy, or creative almost beyond western ability.

Assuming that this recording was already done in 1978, where even the European freejazzen had not yet completely cleared the roof and flown its own way, it is extremely refreshing to hear this duo. Even today, many are not close to what these two do of free-standing and creative music.

It's almost like hearing a duo recording with Paal Nilssen-Love and Mette Rasmussen. Admittedly, the drummer is not as aggressive and "on" as Nilssen-Love, but when Abu goes away with all soprano saxophones, Rasmussen quickly appears in what is left behind the cerebral cortex.

The first part, called "Song for Mithue Totozumi", is divided into "Part I" and "Part II", which could really be in one, because here is the energetic saxophone game over an extremely violent drum game, with a tight and responsive communication.

Part Two, "Song for Sakamoto Kikuyo" is divided into three sequences, "Part I", "Part II" and "Part III", and starts different from the first strings. Kaoru Abe takes it all the way to the alto saxophone and we are seated like on needles to see where this ends. Toyozami comes in with relatively simple comments on drums, and we get a relatively melancholic song like "Part I".

It reappears in "Part II", but they seem to be in a completely different mood during Gaia recording than they were in Minor. Perhaps it's because the recording is done Friday the 13th? (You never know how such days affect people in Japan). But I feel that this is more in explorer mode than on the second recording. (If you look at the attached video (audio track), which was recorded on April 15th, you can see a development in the collaboration).

But as the recordings are so different in mood, one also gets a variation in the disc that is exciting. But when they enter the fifth and final track of the record, "Part III", they are heading for what we hear on April 15th and July 7th. But it is still a melancholy over "Song for Sakamoto Kikuyo", which is both sore and angry, something Abe is the one who takes the most out.

Taken together, I think the record had a better "development" if the two recordings had been reversed, so Gaia's recording had come first. Then you get an intermediate stage with the video (soundtrack), before it all ends up in the hefty recordings from Minor on July 7th.

But there is a chip ticker in the context. The five tracks we are presented to here are fierce, even though they do not "freak out" equally fiercely all the way. It's creative and exciting, and when you hear Abe in these recordings, it's easy to imagine, for example, the Saxophonist Akira Sakata has picked up some of his inspiration."-Jan Granlie, salt-peanuts.eu

This album has been reviewed on our magazine:


The Squid's Ear!