Akira Sakata

Featuring: Nana Omori, Manabu Sakata

Born in 1945 near Hiroshima, eighty years old in a year that marks eighty years since the war, Akira Sakata hands this one over almost humbly, which is not a word you often reach for with him. In a Sentimental Mood is the first record by his new trio Akira Sakata SOS, the alto and clarinet veteran flanked by pianist Nana Omori and his own son on drums, Manabu Sakata. They open with the Duke Ellington ballad you think you know, all velvet and nostalgia, and then Omori climbs onto the tips of her shoes and starts demolishing the piano, until the whole thing tips over into something gloriously unhinged.

Six pieces that swing from a Catalan folk lament (Song of the Birds) and a Kumamoto lullaby (Itsuki no Komoriuta) to two free blowouts plainly titled SOS 1st and SOS 2nd, before signing off with Hatahata, Sakata's own ode to a fish, because the man is a marine biologist and never lets you forget it. Mixed and mastered by Jim O'Rourke, who knows exactly how loud to let it get, and wrapped in Juri's painting Chaos of small monsters, which is about right. First time on vinyl, on Sakata's own Daphnia label: tender one second, terrifying the next, gone before you can file it.