*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 releases on Three Blind Mice, captures the quintet at the moment when its hard bop foundation was beginning to stretch into something more searching: there's still plenty of swing, but the modal frames and freer improvising of the surrounding scene are clearly leaving their mark.

Otsuka drives from the kit with the kind of authority you find in the great American hard-bop drummers (Blakey is the obvious reference point, though Otsuka's touch is lighter), while the front line works through compositions that reward careful listening: heads with real substance, solos that build in conversation rather than in parallel, and arrangements that take their time. A hard-driving entry in the early TBM catalogue, well placed in the collection of anyone interested in how Japanese post-bop carved out its own territory at the start of the decade. Reissued in the Three Blind Mice Supreme Collection 1500.