Toshiyuki Miyama & His New Heird: Masahiko Satoh - Yamataifu (1972)

The greatest cosmic jazz album ever made? The pursuit of Krautrock’s highest accolades armed only with an acoustic jazz orchestra and a single ring-modulator? The Dawning of Humanity’s earliest ages as filtered? YAMATAI-FU is all of these things and more, a spell-binding and iconoclastic work the like of which has never before been encountered. Hot on the heels of the hard-bop drumfuelled kosmiche classic Amalgamation, and once again highly inspired by his collaborations with experimental pianist Wolfgang Dauner, Masahiko Sato next delivered this huge three-part score for Toshiyuki Miyama & New Heard Orchestra, in which drummer Masaru Hiromi became the lynchpin for its entire monumental groove. Indeed, it’s difficult to image how much weight the drummerwould have lost over the course of this mighty session. Around Togashi’s flailing Philly Joe Jones-meets-Klaus Schultze drum insanity, the composer built a series of highly arranged and ever unfolding brass pieces (sometimes cacophonus/sometimes sweet) that united more cosmic jazz in the style of his own Amalgamation together with elements of fullflight Archie Shepp on the title track of his Yasmina, A Black Woman. Over this bizarre mix, Satoh added his own heavily ring-modulated electric piano, sending out Ur-sparks and shards of sonic light into the heavens with this primitive electronic device, kicking Christian Vander’s underachieving butt and creating a proto-Cosmic Jokers work in the process. Side one contained the single epic ‘Ichi’ (First), while side two was split into ‘Ni’ (Second) and ‘San’ (Third). The whole album is a righterous ducking for those who believe the Japanese never get anywhere first.
by Julian Cope in JAPROCKSAMPLER

Style:
Free-Jazz
Avant-Garde
Hard-Bop

Tracks:
01 - Ichi (19:19)
02 - Ni (12:15)
03 - San (04:54)

Line-up:
Masahiko Satoh - Electric Piano, Composed By, Arranged By
Toshiyuki Miyama - Conductor
Masao Kunisada - Bass
Masaru Hiromi - Drums
Kozaburo Yamamoto - Guitar
Yoshinobu Imashiro - Piano
Kazumi Oguro, Shinji Nakayama - Alto Sax
Miki Matsui - Baritone Sax
Kiyoshi Saito, Shoji Maeda - Tenor Sax
Masamichi Uetaka, Seiichi Tokura, Takeshi Aoki, Teruhiko Kataoka - Trombone
Bunji Murata, Kenichi Sano, Koji Hadori, Kunio Fujisaki - Trumpet