★Bridge Inc.
Eve
Speed, Glue & Shinki's 1971 debut album, Eve. Ex-Food Brain guitarist Shinki Chen, bass player Masayoshi Kabe (also known as M Glue) and Filipino Vietnam war veteran Joey "Pepe" Smith, who doubled as both the trio's drummer and vocalist, released two legendary albums in the early '70s. Eve, the earlier of the band's two efforts, was probably the band's only "real" recording, as the self-titled second release in 1972 was put together by Smith from studio outtakes of Chen's guitar playing and trac…
Speed, Glue & Shinki
Speed, Glue & Shinki's second release, originally released in 1972 on Atlantic and often referred to as Tiger, brought together a number of tracks not included on Eve, as well as some new recordings that took a very different musical slant. Joey Smith decided that since he could he handle himself admirably on drums, it was time to challenge a new instrument, so he bought a synthesizer. Drafting in friend Mike Hanopol to take over the bass-playing duties from the departed Masayoshi "Glue" Kabe, S…
D.D.T.
Akira Sakata is a legendary Japanese jazz musician active since the early 70s (Yosuke Yamashita Trio, Akira Sakata Trio) and also an ocean-biologist. Among others he has toured and recorded with The Thing, Jim O’Rourke, Bill Laswell, Merzbow, Chikamorachi, etc.On this album originally released in 1985 he teamed up with vocalist Akira Emoto to create an incredible record which is rooted in Jazz and explores an entire world of sounds. You got to listen to believe it!
Holography
**2006 release, long out of print, very few copies available** One of the rarest albums ever from the mighty Masahiko Satoh, a composer and arranger,as well as a key figure in the avantgarde music from Japan. Originally issued on Japan Columbia in 1970, the two sides of very free piano show a sensitivity that's really amazing – still moments of freedom that reflect Satoh's connection to the avant garde of the time, interwoven with his own sense of cosmic creation, in ways that are similar to his…
Nano Space Odyssey
Recorded at NHK-604-Studio on Nov & Dec 1991 Musicians: Akira Sakata,Tamai Toyooka,Asuka Kaneko, Kyoko Kuroda,Hiroshi Yoshino,Yu Fujii Kiyohiko Semba,Atuy,Fusae Doi, Mishio Ogawa,Shigeri Kitsu,Norihiko Yamanuki.
Jaga Wa Hashitta (The Creature Called Man)
**2006 release, long out of print, very few copies available** This album's a pretty great testament to Satoh's durability as one of the great composer arrangers – sublime stuff from the late 70s, and a record that really works nicely alongside Masahiko's music for films. An obscure murder mystery, given a great deal of depth and class from the music – which is often surprisingly jazzy, despite the setting of the film and kinda avantgardish in some passagesBut all this idle talk aside, it's the …
Satsujin Kyoshitsu
**2006 release, long out of print, very few copies available** Trumpeter Itaru Oki Trio's landmark debut album from 1970 reissued, a flamed out free jazz masterpiece. Itaru Oki (trumpet), Yoshiaki Fujikawa (alto sax), Keiki Midorikawa (cello, bass, piano) for sure one of the earliest free jazz players and albums from Japan. And this album is possibly his finest effort, eclectic and saturated with ethnic elements, quirky, free form.Japanese trumpet player Itaru Oki represents one of the very firs…
Radiation Misa (1981)
2013 release. CD reissue of a cult LP from a early 80s weird Japanese oddity, an amalgam of synthesizer and vocoder processed vocals reciting Missa Ordinarum (!) dusted with bright electronic sound and plenty of reverb. Includes a 16-page booklet with Latin lyrics and Japanese translations, a discussion between Shigeaki Saegusa and Hiroyuki Namba, and liner notes by Shigeaki Saegusa and Hiroyuki Namba
Mooko
**2009 release, long out of print, very few copies available** Mooko was the first installment of a short-lived "power trio" comprised of Japanese free saxophonist Akira Sakata, bassist Bill Laswell, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. At the time of this recording, the latter two were deeply into their Last Exit project, a band with whom Sakata sat in during their tour of Japan. This trio is a bit like a pared-down version of Last Exit, without the incendiary guitar work of Sonny Sharrock…
Isolation
**2005 release, long out of print, very few copies available** This disc is a real brain ripping free jazzing blast from the past. Togashi Masahiko may be a name you have already encountered if you are a bit acquainted with Japanese free hardcore blowing jazz. He was the man responsible for churning out Japan's first free jazz disc being “We Now Create” for which he got assisted by Takayanagi Masayuki and Yoshizawa Motoharu amongst others. The following year in 1969, he teamed up with another ha…
Deformation
**2006 release, long out of print, very few copies available** OK, if obscure and hard to track down Japanese avant-garde and free jazz is your thing then look no further. This disc, released in 1969 is a hard nut to come by since due to extremely poor sales only a handful of copies and some promo copies are known to have hit the streets, making it now one of the hardest free jazz documents to track down. This one comes on bloody red wax. But all this idle talk aside, it's the music that really …
Opera from the works of Tadanori Yokoo
2015 restock....Very last copies, long out of print: back in 1969 avant-garde composer Toshi Ichiyanagi hooked up with Uchida Yuya’s damaged psych rock group Flowers and illustrator Tadanori Yokoo to realise a double-LP set that would combine Fluxus-damaged pop art moves with abstract acid rock, avant electronic drone, frail almost-songs, rehearsal sketches, big band marches bisected by iron-blue drones, wildly evocative field recordings and intimations of limitless, hallucinatory space, all in …
Bitter Music
It is an astonishing gift of fate when a creative artist, known to the world for a particular achievement, is suddenly shown in a quite different light thanks to the existence of a single document that has somehow escaped the ruthless culling mechanisms of time. Harry Partch's Bitter Music is such a document, a “diary of eight months spent in transient shelters and camps, hobo jungles, basement rooms, and on the open road”. This long-lost journal of Harry Partch's wanderings during the Great Dep…