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PRICE:
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$15.00
LOW STOCK LEVEL
1-2 Weeks
01. Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit - We Have Existed
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02. Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit - What Have We Given?
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03. Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit - My Friend, Blood Shaking My Heart
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ARTIST
TAKAYANAGI NEW DIRECTION UNIT, MASAYUKI
TITLE
April Is The Cruellest Month
FORMAT
CD
LABEL
BLANK FORMS
CATALOG #
BF 008CD
BF 008CD
GENRE
JAZZ
RELEASE DATE
6/21/2019
Masayuki "Jojo" Takayanagi
(1932 - 1991) was a maverick Japanese guitarist, a revolutionary spirit whose oeuvre embodied the radical political movements of late '60s Japan. Having cut his teeth as an accomplished
Lennie Tristano
disciple playing cool jazz in the late '50s, Takayanagi had his mind blown by the
Chicago Transit Authority
's "free form guitar" in 1969 and promptly turned his back on the jazz scene by which he was beloved. Takayanagi had found a new direction, an annihilation of jazz and its associated idolatry of hegemonic American culture. Aiming his virtuoso chops towards the stratosphere, Takayanagi dedicated himself to the art of the freakout, laying waste to tradition left and right, most notably via the all-out assault of his aptly-named
New Direction For The Arts
(later,
New Direction Unit
) and collaborations with like-minded outsider saxophonist
Kaoru Abe
. His innovations on the instrument parallel those of
Sonny Sharrock
and
Derek Bailey
and paved the way for the Japanese necromancy of
Keiji Haino
and
Otomo Yoshihide
, but even at its most limitless hurdling Takayanagi's playing is propelled by the dexterous grasp of his foundations, to which he paid tribute with elegant takes on flamenco and
Ornette Coleman
's "Lonely Woman." Culled from 1975 sessions by the New Direction Unit,
April Is The Cruellest Month
was originally slated for release on ESP-Disk before the label's untimely demise that year. Part of the period of Takayanagi's career which he termed "non-section music," one can only imagine how its unholy racket might have altered an international understanding of Japanese noise. On "We Have Existed" and "What Have We Given?", the classic lineup of Takayanagi with
Kenji Mori
(alto sax, flute, bass clarinet),
Nobuyoshi Ino
(bass, cello), and
Hiroshi Yamazaki
(percussion) prove that free improvisation was thriving well beyond western Europe with a set of dilapidated, spacious clanging, Takayanagi's squalling feedback and Mori's
Eric Dolphy
moves undulating atop the joyous clamor. The cataclysmic "My Friend, Blood Shaking My Heart" is another story altogether. Infernal sheets of contorted sound find the berserk instrumentalists hopelessly entangled as they urge the explosion deeper and deeper into ecstatic oblivion. Rivaled in intensity only by
John Coltrane
's
The Olatunji Concert
(1967),
Peter Brötzmann
's
Machine Gun
(1968), and
Dave Burrell
's
Echo
(1969),
April Is The Cruellest Month
deservedly sees the light of day on the vinyl format for which it was originally conceived, marking the first issue of Takayanagi's music outside of Japan.
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