I’ve been buying a lot of extremely out-there records lately, so many that I put together a whole blog post about them over at Mostly-Retro. It didn’t feel right writing about them here as they were all in-print in some way or another, and I don’t like to spend too much time writing about music here if I can’t share it, that’s kind of the point of an MP3 blog after all.
Tonight’s music is definitely out-of-print, in fact, I don’t think it was ever commercially released in the first place. Shit, I can’t even find it streaming on YouTube.
Toshinori Kondo
China Boogie
Black Port
Antonio Fire
When I comb through old Japanese records there are a few names I’m always on the lookout for. A lot of my favorite Japanese artists from the 70s and 80s just as often appeared on other artists’ records as they did their own, so I never know where they’ll turn up. One such artist is Yasuaki Shimizu. I’ve been into his stuff for the past few years now and I can’t believe that this is the first time his name has come up on this site.
Shimizu is primarily a jazz saxophonist, but he’s popped up all over place through the years, playing a variety of instruments across all kinds of genres. He’s developed a bit of a cult following in the West for a pair of albums; his 1983 album with the group Mariah, their amazing Utakata No Hibi, and his 1982 solo album Kakashi. Both albums are monumental works that defy all attempts of categorization. Dope as fuck shit that melds jazz, synthpop, rock, ambient, you name it. Not a day goes by where I don’t see copies of either hanging in a record store. They’ve become mainstays of the Japanese music scene and are some of the most influential records of their generation.
But like I said, the dude has been around. He’s shown up on some Ryuichi Sakamoto albums, a couple of records by Kazumi Watanabe (former YMO guitarist) and has even contributed to a few works by Towa Tei. I never know where he’s going to show up, so I always keep an eye out.
My diligence paid off recently. With this album’s rather lazy cover, I nearly skipped right past it in the bins, but I checked out the back cover just to be sure, and lo and behold, I found Shimizu’s name, alongside some other notable performers as well. Playing with Shimizu on this promo-only 12″ single are legendary experimental guitarist Fred Frith and bassist/producer extraordinaire Bill Laswell (who keeps popping up on records I buy because he’s literally on almost everything). That’s a hell of a line-up.
You might recognize Laswell’s name from Herbie Hancock’s electro-jazz masterpiece Futureshock, and that can give you a pretty good idea as to what this sounds like. It’s hyper-sample heavy electro-jazz/funk. The only thing that makes it sound more jazzy than Hancock’s similar work is that the primary instrument, the trumpet, remains entirely acoustic.
That trumpet is played by the person whom this track is credited to, Toshinori Kondo. Again, like a lot of the music I’ve been sharing lately, I don’t know a ton about him. I know he’s been releasing music since the late 70s, and most of it is jazz, especially of the free improvisation and abstract variety. But he also occasionally dips his feet into more electronic things like this. He’s worked with DJ Krush a few times, and released a dub record in 2002 called Nerve Tripper. I hope can I dig more into his discography in the future, save for the free improvisation stuff. Not my thing.
I love this kind of stuff though, it’s dated in a way that most 80s music isn’t. You see retro synthpop and hair metal act all the time. No one is making stuff like this anymore.