Toshiyuki Miyama, The New Herd

*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 are still the harmonic ambitions and ensemble dynamics that made the band more than a swing-era throwback, but the rhythmic feel runs closer to the soul-jazz and groove-oriented big-band writing that was current at the time.

Long-form arrangements give plenty of room for individual soloists to step forward, and the whole record carries the kind of relaxed authority that comes from a working ensemble in its prime. A reminder that Japanese big-band jazz of the seventies wasn't purely a backward-looking tradition: Miyama and his band knew exactly which contemporary American tendencies were worth absorbing, and they brought a particular Japanese precision to the absorption. Reissued in the Three Blind Mice Supreme Collection 1500.