I normally tend to find out about such things as this forthcoming release on Far Out long after the event. So it’s nice to be ahead of things, for once!
Rather strangely it was my search for Casiopea on CD at a reasonable price in the UK that lead me to the discovery. That quest is ongoing (and as yet unsuccessful!), but it took me, around the houses, via Minnie Riperton – and her astonishing ‘whistle register’ singing – to Honest Jon’s Records’ website, where I first learned of this latest archival Joyce release.
As I’m typing this I’m just starting to listen to the stuff that’s already our online. There’s an epic eleven minute version of her famous Feminina track, and – what I’m listening to right now – a piece called Descompassadamente.
I’d describe this latternumber as pastoral prog samba; it’s in 7/8, and seems to be a cyclic groove, with Buster William’s rich double bass very prominent in the mix, and layers of acoustic guitar, percussion and Joyce’s (and other) harmonised vocals. Lovely!
Now I’m on to the epic Feminina. This song, so joyful, and familiar to fans like myself, starts off sounding just like the versions I know, with Joyce’s dextrously nimble guitar work. But once again the lush low register timbre of Buster Williams’ upright bass adds a new dimension to proceedings.
These two teasers are mastered by Al Schmidt. And they sound great, albeit it I’m currently listening over my iPhone! But I read on the bandcamp link above that the remainder of the album has been ‘restored’ from a cassette mix Joyce had. Sounds a bit ominous! Audio cleaning and restoration software these days is amazing. Let’s hope it does the remainder of the material justice!
Hardcore devotee of such music as I am, I’ve simply got to have this! So I’ll be putting in my pre-order as soon as I can. as I’m typing this Feminina is passing the 7:30 mark, and electric keys and what sounds like vibes have entered the otherwise cyclic vamp mix.
If you love groove music, as I most certainly do, and the terrific artistry of Joyce, and that delightful hinterland where ‘70s jazz and Brazilian music converge, this is definitely one to check out.
Ok, so last night, thinking that my daily listening to The Rainbow Goblins – sometimes multiple times – might be starting to wear thin, or lose it’s charm – I discovered (thanks to YouTube’s algorithm-bots) Takanaka’s unbelievably wonderful live 1981 Budokan performance of the entire album.
Prior to discovering Takanaka and his sublime music I would never have imagined watching a Japanese guy in a yellow plastic outfit, with rainbow hair and a rainbow axe, and a band dressed dressed in giant paper/maché goblin heads, would or could make me so happy. Who knew?
So now it’s time to knuckle down to some extra-curricular work – I’m stony broke, and a teacher in my summer hols (normally I’d be able to coast through the summer. Not this year!) – earn me some doh-re-mi, and (once the wolf is safely chased from the door!) start exploring his wider catalogue.
I know I want Seychelles (1976), his self titled ‘77 recording, and An Insatiable High (1977). Whilst I’m on the topic of the latter album, I wonder, did Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck cop his sporty look from Takanaka? Or is that just an example of what art historian Norman Rosenthal once called ‘morphological resonance’?*
Takanaka’s T-shirt and the road markings chime!Morphological resonance, homage, plagiarism?
Vulfpeck have an incredibly strong aesthetic, from their own font, to the little neo-classical and yet hyper-modern logo/jingle combo that starts their videos, to the sounds and visuals. And yet despite this, Takanaka’s sporty look – or rather the starkly sublime design brilliance of Insatiable High’s cover imagery – manages to be effortlessly and very Japanesely, ‘supelior’! Banzai!!!
* Trust an art critic to coin such a wordy phrase. Why use ‘they just so happen to look the same’, or ‘coincidence’, when you can invent your own snappy polysyllabic term!?
More Masayoshi Takanaka, this time 1977’s wonderfully titled An Insatiable High.
I’m trying to buy these albums in the UK, but they’re largely ludicrously expensive (over £20 per album, and then some, with added shipping costs!). So in the meantime, YouTube is my saviour.
I’ve only listened to track one so far, but I loved that. So I’m hoping I’ll enjoy the whole thing. We shall see, I guess? I’m still totally sold on Rainbow Goblins, which I’m part way through my third listen to at present!
Partly recorded in Brazil, Takanaka’s fourth album has lots of names I don’t recognise, and a few I do: Abe Laboriel, James Gadson, Jeff Porcaro, Greg Phillinganes and Paulinho da Costa amongst others.
Not listened to this one much yet. Just had a quick skip through to get a flavour. Very Brasilian… but I’ll return to it properly in few coarse!
A beautiful cover that really does convey the magic within.
I’ve always loved discovering new music. New to me, that is. I don’t care how old it is. And often I find I like older stuff better than contemporary stuff anyway.
Well, today is a blessed day, that way, as I’ve just stumbled upon the amazing 1981 album Rainbow Goblins, by Japanese guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka.
Masayoshi Takanaka, a new hero of mine!
I only found out about it today. And after listening to a few tracks on YouTube, I decided I had to buy the CD. I’ve ordered a copy via Amazon, and it was a bit pricey for a skint skinflint like me, (Jap import, over £20!). But it’s totally stolen my heart.
The vid’ that took me over the Rainbow.
Indeed, from the little else of Takanaka’s stuff I’ve heard since discovering this, I think I’ll be buying more of his music. But I’ll get to that later. For now I just want to testify to how much I dig this incredible album.
Apparently the album is a concept double album – very prog! – based upon a Children’s’s story, about seven ‘rainbow goblins’. The story, by an Italian (poss a Count!?), Ul de Rico, is where the cover art comes from. I’ve ordered a copy of that as well!
Katsu ‘Katz’ Hoshi.
I have to give an honourable mention to arranger Katsu Hoshi, for the strings, and – presumably? – the incredible orchestral Prologue, which sets up this dreamy album perfectly. Is the album credit, in the name ‘Katz’ Hoshi, a sly reference to Steely Dan’s Gary Katz, perhaps?
There’s even an English language spoken narration, by a chap called Roy Garner. For a Brit it’s particularly nice to hear an English narration from beyond these shores that isn’t an American or transatlantic accent. I feel right at home in rainbow goblin land!
This is my kind of place!
The music has a childish and delightfully goofy innocence at times. But as it’s all played by top notch sessionistas and jazz fusion musos, it also has a beautiful late 1970s – think Creed Taylor’s CTI, but filtered through a Japanese Teletubbies filter! – sophistication.
Man, I totally dig it! The music itself runs an appropriately broad and colourful gamut, from the orchestral opening, to the twinkling ambience of Rising Arch, or the hard jazz funk of Seven Goblins or Plumed Bird to the rockier edge of Thunderstorm, or the totally out there fusion of tracks like Rainbow Paradise, which morphs through several genres, and yet defies any single categorisation, this album is quite a trip!
Regarding the last category – ‘all over the map’ – after the nutty ‘goberins, goberins, goberins, goberins…’ vocal intro of Seven Goblins, The Sunset Valley is almost like the kind of music and melodies you might imagine hearing piped into a Japanese shopping mall in the ‘80s! Elsewhere there’s a bit of reggae (Just Chuckle), some Latin vibes… and the whole lot is sprinkled with disco fairy dust, from occasional grooves to the vocoder’d vocals.
As I’ve remarked already… simply astonishing!
Some of Takanaka’s ‘70s recordings feature US players, like Abe Laboriel, Harvey Mason and even the Tower of Power horns. But this amazing album is, I believe, an entirely Japanese affair. And these Kitty cats sure can play!
What a truly sublime and astonishing recording. I’ve definitely found a new love. Oh, and the album artwork is perfect! And how cute is that Kitty record label logo!? I can see that I need to dive deep down the J-Jazz-Fusion wormhole!
An Insatiable High, 1977
FURTHER EXPLORATIONS!?
Takanaka produced a ‘prequel’ White Goblin album, many years later. Might that be any good? I have no idea! But having listened to some stuff from his earlier albums, I’m pretty sure that I’ll really dig them, so his Seychelles, Brazilian Skies, and the sublimely titled AnInsatiable High all beckon, as does his 1979 compilation album All Of Me.
Takanaka’s 1976 debut, Seychelles.All Of Me, 1979.
On the four track Future Days, embedded amongst three giant sprawling liquid psychedelic sound sculptures, is this little gem, CAN’s only real ‘hit single’.
As usual, Jaki Leibezeit grooves like a mother. How any drummer can make such a simple part so difficult to emulate is astonishing. It’s all in the feel. Truly awesome.
CAN’s fourth album, a complete meisterwerk!
Holger Czukay shows that less really CAN be more, and Michael Karoli supplies one of his best rhythm guitar parts; melodic, funky, and fairly unique in the CAN canon. Irvin Schmidt’s keys pepper the piece with perfect piquancy, and there’s a solo – a music concrete solo, no less – that is an absolute masterpiece.
And this track got them on ze German hit parade! Crazy times, eh!? Can you imagine this charting anywhere in the world now? Only in the private top-tens of the cognoscenti!
I usually prefer to buy CDs, as I’m a bit old fashioned that way. But this is selling for silly money on CD, so I’ve had to content to myself with downloading MP3s.
I already have Tago Mago on both vinyl and CD-reissue. But this 40th Anniversary re-re-issue has allegedly been significantly improved audio wise. Plus there are three bonus tracks. This being one of my all time favourite Can albums, I had to hear it.
The first four tracks are just mindblowingly awesome. To me at any rate. And they are why this gets five stars.
Paperhouse is kind of oddball, starting with a loping laidback but intense 6/8 groove and one of Michael Karoli’s best ever guitar parts, before turning into one of their hyper intense thermo-nuclear jams, finally emerging the other side, into a laid back jazzy swang-thang version of part one. Part one is my favourite section, followed by the jazzy re-iteration. But the whole thing is a real trip, in the parlance of those days.
Mushroom is fabulous. But I’ve waxed lyrical over that one elsewhere, and don’t want to repeat myself here. Likewise, Oh Yeah is just totally awesome. And it’s driven along on a groove by Leibezeit that I utterly adore. But I’ll say no more about it here for now.
Halleluwah- what a fantastic title! – is an epic grinding groove monster. Once again Jaki Leibezeit’s drum performance is just utterly flawless, and sublimely funky. But, as brilliant as he is, it only really becomes the complete Can experience because of what the collective bring to bear. And it’s a juggernaut of awesomeness!
And what about that middle eight or interlude? Which is followed by a kind of music concrete section of ‘noise’ solos, conjured from synths, guitars, percussion and goodness knows what.
My preferred version of the cover.
For me it’s these four tracks that make Tago Mago an undeniably essential recording. And whilst I haven’t yet done a direct A/B/C comparison across the vinyl and my two different remasters as yet, there is both an intensity and clarity to these recordings that does seem to me to bring a new depth and power to bear.
And these recordings have always kicked aural ass, as far as I’m concerned. So for them to grow even bigger hairier musical balls, so to speak, is wonderful.
Oh, and whilst – perhaps partly cause I’m a drummer – I feel Jaki Leibezeit was Can’s secret weapon number one. After him I have to single out Damo Suzuki, whose nutty shamanic hollering and lyrics/melodies really add the song dimension to what might otherwise have been an amazing instrumental jam band.
But having singled out Leibezeit and Suzuki, whilst still listening to an extended instrumental section of Halleluwah I can’t not mention Irmin Schmidt, Michael Karoli and Holger Czukay. These cats are awesome. They really know how to brew up a cosmic groove!
Although it’s massively different from Weather Report, it’s also fundamentally very similar. If not in exact musical styles or textures, in that everyone is always soloing and yet no one is soloing. And at their mighty beating heart it’s all about improvisation.
This latest remaster is really something! I usually lose interest after Halleluwah. But Aumgn is playing now, and it’s fantastic. It’s certainly less accessible and compelling than the first four tracks. But as art-rock experimentation it’s top notch. I usually find such stuff anathema. But the clarity and sonic depth and richness of this latest remaster is helping me hear this afresh.
It may perhaps wear out its welcome eventually. But there are some terrific moments. What sounds like a bowed double bass at one point, achieves a sonority that’s astonishing, made more so by the context. But, as we pass ten minutes, even though the sounds are now pretty pristine, and continue to morph through numerous soundscapes, as improved as it is, and as good as it is in its own (left) field, It’s charm is starting to feel spread rather thin!
But wait, there’s the famed barking dog! Crazy stuff. In the end, thanks to the improved sound, I find I can take this monstrously indulgent bit of experimental improv’ much better now. It helps that I’m a drummer as the final five or so minutes are essentially a drum solo.
Czukay and Suzuki in session.
They finally do lose me, with Peking-O, which I could happily do without, improved sound or no. Bring Me Coffee Or Tea is a ‘slight return’, to a more typical Can sound of the era. And it’s good. Especially with the improved clarity making all the parts crisper and clearer than ever before. But as good as it is, it’s not up there with the first four tracks.
So, the original album is done, by this point. And, improved as it very audibly is, it remains a beast of two parts for me: the first entirely sublime. The second a much more mixed bag. Next up are the extra bonus live tracks.
Mushroom (Live, ‘72) is illustrative of how even when revisiting ‘compositions’, Can’s improv’ imperative might render the track almost unrecognisable. This is a decent variation, showing plenty of imagination. But it’s not a patch on the official Tago Mago album version.
Next is a much more recognisable rendition of the song Spoon, the final track on 1972’s Ege Bamyasi. Spoon was also a surprise chart hit in Germany, helping bring the babd greater prominence (and leading to their famed free concert). But this time it’s not just the song we get, but a doorway into an überjam. The initial part is a pretty decent version, and nice for a Can fan to have/hear. But when it goes into the lengthy jam then it’s a more debatable proposition.
I’ve yet to take the plunge with Can’s Lost Tapes, mostly ‘cause I fear that the best stuff was put out. What remained on the cutting room floor, must therefore, inevitably, be less good. Surely? Given the nature of their ‘process’, a lot of less compelling material had to be worked through to birth the real gems. This extended version of Spoon, which meanders around a lot, mostly quite aimlessly, morphing in places into other songs (there’s a definite Coffee Of Tea passage!), kind of backs such ideas up.
The third and final live extra is a version of Halleluwah. This has the most noticeable layer of audible hiss, and still retains a pretty muddy sound. So was this perhaps the most challenging ‘restoration’ from the famed Can archives represented here? Whilst this remains a closer rendition than the first of the three live cuts presented here, it lacks the focus, punch and outright balls of the studio/album version.
In conclusion, the added live material is nice for the Can fan, of which I’m certainly one. But it’s not what’s best about this whole package, which remains tracks one to four. And the whole caboodle, most notably the official album tracks are also fairly clearly sonically improved. So it’s really just for tracks one through four, in their improved state, that I shelled out for this third iteration of this classic album.
Holy-guacamole! What an astonishing debut. Joni Mitchell just knocks me off my feet. I’m winded, as if with a hefty punch to the solar plexus. And tears come. The music is just so powerful. The swift one-two combination of I Had A King and Michael From Mountains is a pair of knockout blows right from the get go.
The other and most notable thing, for me, is the emotional register of it all. It’s beautifully and very powerfully melancholy. Even Night In The City, the most overtly or ostensibly ‘jolly’ song – track three (a perfectly good song, but the weakest here, for my money) – has an inescapable element of that Joni blue.
After the slight anomaly of Night In The City, come Marcie and Nathan La Franeer, and we’re plunged back into the cold icy waters of Joni’s oceanic Northern consciousness. When we get to Sisotowbell Lane, any dam on my constipated emotions is obliterated. I love the entire album. But Sisotowbell Lane is a snowy peak of Himalayan stratosphere piercing sublimity.
But, as if to confound my gushing hyperbole, she follows this with the magnificence of The Dawntreader. This album could easily be the dictionary or Brewer’s definition of the phrase ‘an embarrassment of riches’.
Mercifully the intensity let’s up a fraction with the slightly strident mildly experimental Pirate of Penance, and remains at a lower ebb for the title track. Every single track, save perhaps Night In The City, gives the lie to the ‘female folkie’ label occasionally applied to Joni (esp. in her early days*), as they are all far more richly complex, more ‘compositional’…
And so we come to journey’s end, with Cactus Tree. And once again we’re stood atop a mountain, or are we riding the crest of an emotional wave of titanic oceanic proportions? How could such a slight willowy polio afflicted young woman become the lightning rod for such powerful elemental forces?
As long as I live I will love Joni with an unrequited passion. Who was it – Woody Allen, perhaps? – that said unrequited love was the only kind that really lasts! Song to a Seagull is an astonishing album. A masterpiece. And that it was Joni’s debut is even more astounding.
The version I’ve just listened to, which ended with uncanny Joni-esque perfection just as I arrived at work (how will I explain my puffy red teary eyes?), is the recent 2021 remaster, from the Reprise Records reissue box. It’s been ‘improved’, from the original David Crosby produced sessions, apparently.
I have to confess that I don’t find the engineering or production interventions particularly noteworthy, or even very noticeable (mind, this particular listen was whilst driving, so the music was competing with all the noises associated with that). Although STAS is sonically different to the following albums, that’s also part it’s period charm.
The remaster certainly doesn’t spoil that. But nor, so far at any rate, to my ears, does it radically alter or improve it. STAS simply remains a sublime slice of early Joni. Totally essential, in my world.
* One has to go back to her pre album café gig era, some of which is documented on the terrific Volume 1, The Early Years, 1963-1967, from the marvellous Joni Mitchell Archives series, to find her sounding like a more typical ‘60s folkster.
Belonging to what one might call Jobim’s ‘third age’ (I’ll say a bit more on this later), this is a mid to late period recording, and is utterly sublime.
If, like me, you really love the music of Antônio Carlos Jobim, then this is an essential purchase. It’s his 11th album, released in 1980, so perhaps around the middle of his career, and now about 40 years old.
There are many familiar tracks here, such as The Girl from Ipanema and Dindi. Then there are others less familiar, such as the the extraordinary Two Kites. But all superb, and the older numbers are given very fresh treatments, such that none are just routine reworkings. For example, Someone To Light Up My Life is terrifically re-imagined.
Originally a double album, it all fits conveniently on one CD. A key part of the albums charm is Jobim’s partnership with arranger Claus Ogerman, which reaches a kind of apotheosis here.
Jobim and Ogerman in the studio.
With twenty tracks, including versions of most of the ol’ favourites – but pretty much all reworked in refreshing ways (for example the final track is a vocal and piano only version of Estrada Branca, sung in English) – and a number of new pieces, it’s a smorgasbord, or an embarrassment of riches.
Perhaps rather ironically, one of the weakest cuts, at least to my ears, is his most famous, The Girl From Ipanema, which is relegated to opening side three of the vinyl, or track eleven on the CD.
As usual, the supporting cast are both diverse and stellar, with American jazzers like Bob Cranshaw (bass), Bucky Pizarrelli (guitar) and Grady Tate (drums) rubbing shoulders very smoothly with Brazilians Pascoal Meirelles (drums) and Rubens Bassini (percussion). It’s interesting that, unlike most of his earlier albums, no star horn players are mentioned.
Returning to my ‘third age of Jobim’ idea, I think this is a good example of how, after his youthful bossa period, in the ‘60s, then his leaner ‘art music’ era of the ‘70s, from this recording onwards, he achieved a kind of late-era synthesis, moving easily between vocals and instrumentals, large orchestrations and solo performances, simplicity and complexity.
If you’re building a Jobim collection, although I wouldn’t say this is the best or most logical place to start, it’s not a bad one either, as it contains something from almost all aspects of his career. For the experienced Jobimista, it is, of course, essential.
Well, this has been a long time coming, and no mistake. It’s nearly 40 years since the original Nightfly spun his tales from the foot of Mt Belzoni.
Sometimes people ask if there is such a thing as the perfect album. Well, for my money, The Nightfly is one such special and precious thing. So a live recording has some ridiculously high standards to live up to.
But as I sit listening to this, for the first time since it arrived, I am not disappointed. My first complete listen is in the car driving to work today. I’m now listening on headphones, at days’ end. Much better!Becker and Fagen were infamous studio perfectionists. It’s quite possibly thanks to the surviving legacy of such rigorously high standards that this stood any chance of success at all.
But then, of course, there is the material. With songs as well put together as these – each one is literally a perfect work of musical art – and a crack team of musicians, who are up to the job of paying such masterpieces their due respect, well… to alter a famous phrase, they were, perhaps, doomed to succeed!?
As a drummer, one of the first things that struck me was how busy and ‘pretty’ some of Keith Carlock’s playing is. In particular his left hand ghost or grace notes on the snare drum. I thought, for a brief moment, uh-oh, he’s overdoing it. Some may feel he is? But as I heard more and more, and finally the whole thing, I grew less inclined to nitpick.
The Dan were notably hard on drummers, ultimately creating Wendel, and for The Nightfly Wendel II, as a way to make drum parts more precise. Carlock is metronomically tight (how much post-production quantising is involved here, I don’t know?), and pretty much everything he adds manages not to get in the way of the feel of the tracks as we know and love them, but rather to add a bit of snap, crackle, pop and fizz to things. Impressive!
Then there’s the duality of structure vs improv’, and how to handle that. I think these redoubtable folk get the balance just right. The songs all sound faithful to the originals in most significant and structural respects, with just a little wiggle room for improv, and variety. There are occasional tweaks of vocal melody by Don, some ‘live show’ variant endings (e.g. Green Flower Street), and even a little stretching out here and there.
Fabulously it remains in that honey-pot sweet spot, the much vaunted ‘Goldilocks zone’, of neither too little nor too much, but just the right amount!
Listening a second time it’s all so incredibly clean, precise and beautifully mixed and balanced, one can’t help but wonder how much modern tech has helped play a hand in realising such a stunning outcome. But to be honest, I frankly couldn’t care less! Because sometimes the ends justify the means. And here is a case in point.
The recordings are from 2019, and are performed by The Steely Dan Band, as the post-Walter Becker group is known. recorded at the Orpheus (Boston, MA) and Beacon (NYC) Theatres. Personnel is as follows:
Donald Fagen, vocals, keys, melodica Jim Beard, keys Jon Herrington, Connor Kennedy, guitar Freddie Washington, bass Keith Carlock, drums Michael Leonhart, trumpet Walt Weiskopf, sax Jim Pugh, trombone Carolyn Leonhart, Catherine Russell, Jamie Leonhart, LaTanya Hall, b-vocals
All things considered, this is ace! An essential addition to the Dan/Fagen catalogue.
