Takayanagi Masayuki New Direction For The Art

La Grima

Genre: JAZZ / FUSION

LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Tempestuous ’71 free jazz shreddddd from legendary Japanese guitarist Takayanagi in a feral recording making its first appearance on vinyl.

Recoded at Genya Festival in Sanrizuka on 14th August, 1971, to outraged reactions, ‘La Grima’ depicts Takayanagi throwing down double hard and wild for 42 minutes with flaying percussionist Yamazuki Hiroshi and Mori Kenji on mortally wounded sax. Heck-raising and barely-hinged, it’s a standout example of Japanese jazz’s headlong swerve to avant-garde as an expression of anti-establishment politics, as led by Masayuki since the ‘50s in various forms of his New Direction ensemble. Apparently the concert incensed the audience to catcalls and shower the band with debris, although Takayanagi would later call it a success and “an authentic and realistic depiction of the situation” to jazz mag Swing Journal.

The frankly ferocious results stem from decades of increasingly freer experiments with the parameters of jazz since the ‘50s, which developed into two broad strands for Takayanagi; Mas projection and Gradual Projection. ‘La Grima’ (Tears) falls into the former category, epitomising its use of dense, rapid and manic shredding and beating to disrupt the listener’s sense of space-time. The results are fucking fearless and ruthless, swarming with a whelmingly overdriven, muscular and agile energy and fury that can’t be denied; screaming, not speaking, directly to the flux of domestic Japanese politics and seismic societal changes of the times.

While decades later he would commit to complex Action Direct works for tapes and electronics that dovetailed the ‘80s Japanese noise scene, 1971’s ‘La Grima’ spies his electric guitar effectively sparking that scene into action at the earliest opportunity, paralleling movements toward jazz improvisation that embraced atonality and asymmetry both at home, with the likes of Keiji Haino’s scream-jazz unit Lost Aaraaff, and in the US, a la Albert Ayler or Ornette Coleman, or the likes of AMM in UK.

LP (Black Vinyl) (5)