★Three Blind Mice
Be-Bop '82
*2026 stock* The title says it: a deliberate, joyful return to bebop fundamentals from the Kenji Mori quintet, recorded at a moment when the language could already feel like a stylistic choice rather than a default. By 1982 the Japanese jazz scene ha…
Gallery
*2026 stock* Toshiyuki Miyama led The New Herd for decades, one of the most important and most adventurous Japanese big bands of the post-war period, and the working ensemble through which a remarkable number of Japanese composers and arrangers found…
Sunday Thing
*2026 stock* Another date from Toshiyuki Miyama's New Herd for Three Blind Mice, and a strong candidate for the band's most accessible single record. Sunday Thing leans into the warmer, more groove-conscious end of the New Herd's repertoire: there ar…
Mari Nakamoto III
*2026 stock* The third album from singer Mari Nakamoto for Three Blind Mice, and the one that pushes hardest at the conventions of mainstream vocal jazz. The line-up is the giveaway: alongside Nakamoto's voice, the record places bassist Isao Suzuki a…
Now's The Time
*2026 stock* A live document from the legendary “5 Days In Jazz” festival in Tokyo in March 1974, and one of the most ambitious multi-band albums in the Three Blind Mice catalogue. The record gathers some of the most important working units of the mo…
Active Volcano
*2026 stock* Nobuo Hara led Sharps & Flats for an astonishing run, well over half a century, and the band became one of the institutions of Japanese jazz, in roughly the same way the Clarke-Boland Big Band held its place in Europe. Active Volcano cat…
Live In Montreux
*2026 stock* The Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio in concert at Montreux, and one of the relatively few records that documents the working group on an international stage. By the time of this recording the trio had already been together for years, and the band…
The In Crowd
*2026 stock* A mid-seventies entry from the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio, and one of the records where the leader's bluesy, groove-conscious side comes most clearly to the front. The title track is the Ramsey Lewis standard, and the choice tells you most o…
Go On
*2026 stock* Drummer George Otsuka was a fixture of the Tokyo jazz club scene from the sixties onwards, leading a series of working bands that earned a reputation for tight ensemble playing and consistently high temperature. 'Go On', one of the early…
Encounter
*2026 stock* One of the more obscure entries in the early Three Blind Mice catalogue, and a record that points to the label's willingness, from very near its beginning, to host visiting players alongside the domestic scene. The American saxophonist A…
Coco's Blues
*2026 stock* Guitarist Sunao Wada spent the seventies as one of the most consistently working figures in Japanese jazz, a player whose tone owed something to Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell but whose phrasing carried a particular Japanese weight, mo…
Firebird
*2026 stock* Saxophonist Kenji Mori belongs to the second generation of TBM regulars, a player whose work for the label spans several years and several formats, but whose quartet records have a particularly distilled quality. Firebird fits cleanly in…
Gathering
*2026 stock* The pianist Fumio Karashima is best known internationally for his long association with Elvin Jones, having held the piano chair in Jones's working bands for years, a credit that already tells you most of what you need to know about his …
Conversation
*2026 stock* One of the more intimate entries in the Three Blind Mice catalogue: a duo session, with all the exposure and concentrated focus the format implies. Conversation lives up to its title. Two players in close, careful dialogue, with neither …
Four Scenes
*2026 stock* A later Sunao Wada session for Three Blind Mice, and one of the more outward-looking records in his TBM run. The quintet-plus-one format brings the saxophonist and flautist Minoru Ikeno alongside Wada's working group, and the addition sh…
Blues World
*2026 stock* An earlier Sunao Wada outing on Three Blind Mice, recorded with both quartet and quintet formations across the programme, and built (as the title suggests) around the blues. But this is blues in the broader, more searching sense the seve…
Straight To The Core
*2026 stock* This album is the second release by saxophonist Sachi Hayasaka, following her debut album Free Fight. Most of the music was recorded in Tokyo with members of Stir Up!, capturing the raw energy and spirit of the group. Two additional trac…
Live!
*2026 stock* A live document from one of the towering figures in Japanese jazz history. By the early seventies Terumasa Hino had established himself as Japan's most internationally fluent trumpeter, a player whose vocabulary moved easily between Lee …
Montreux Cyclone
*2026 stock* A double-set capturing Bingo Miki's Inner Galaxy Orchestra in live performance at Montreux, and one of the more ambitious large-ensemble documents in the entire Three Blind Mice catalogue. Miki spent his career writing for big bands at t…
Yellow Carcass In The Blue
*2026 stock* Legendary Japanese jazz vocalist Kimiko Kasai, one of the most innovative singers of the 1970s, joins forces with the fiery Kosuke Mine Quartet on the newly reissued Yellow Carcass in the Blue, originally released in 1971 on the esteemed…