An early masterpiece under the name of Count Buffalo - this is Akira Ishikawa's 1st record! Genuine jazz, rock and African groovy sound. A rare groove album with a soulful arrangement throughout, with Kozaburo Yamaki and Hiroshi Takami as arrangers.
The biggest volume so far in the Spiritual Jazz series from Jazzman Records – and maybe the best as well! This fantastic collection looks at the huge legacy of spiritual jazz that flowed from the Japanese scene in the postwar years – sounds that had their initial expression around the same time that the modal jazz of Miles and Coltrane was bursting forth in the US, but which also too so many twists and turns of its own – with some very strong influences along the way from Japanese folk and culture! Much of this music was initially restricted only to release on Japanese labels – and even later, as some of the artists attained fame, the global circulation of their music only happened with more commercial recordings.
In the years following World War Two, Japan developed one of the most insatiable, dynamic and diverse markets for jazz. For a crucial period of little over a decade, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Japanese jazz culture progressed at an astonishing rate, producing an extraordinary array of artists, recordings and record labels that created some of the most forward thinking and impressive jazz to be committed to tape. This amazing journey is explored on ‘J Jazz’. This record uncovers some of the most sought after and rare material from this period and pulls together key artists who shaped the post-war modern jazz scene in Japan.
With J Jazz volume 4, the BBE J Jazz Bullet Train continues its journey traversing the expansive landscape of modern Japanese jazz. Volume 4 is the latest in the universally praised compilation series exploring the best, rarest and most innovative jazz to emerge from the Far East. Please take your seats for a first-class ticket to J Jazz central.
A fantastic collaboration between Japanese trumpeter Terumasa Hino and avant bassist Reggie Workman – one that might seem unusual if you only know Hino's later work, but which was part of a few key collaborations that Hino and Workman did together at the start of the 70s – part of a real spiritual awakening in the trumpeter's music! The tracks are long and very expressive – and the group is mostly Japanese – with Hino on trumpet, Workman on bass, Motohiko Hino on drums, Kiyoshi Sugimoto on guitar, Mideo Ichikawa on electric piano, Yuji Imamura on conga, and Takao Uematsu on bass clarinet and tenor – all working together in a spirit that's clearly caught the imagination of the post-Coltrane years, and which is completely different than the straighter hardbop that Hino was recording just a few years previously.