Showing posts with label Kanzaki On The Road. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kanzaki On The Road. Show all posts

Friday, 26 April 2019

Back to Kanzaki on the Road (aka Hisaaki Kanzaki): Open My Road and Little Road Gang










A very happy man indeed, from the looks of it, perhaps due to the great décolleté (or outright nudism).  Long long ago and far away I posted his third album which was called Long Romantic Road (the titles are suspiciously all similar aren't they).  It had a special place in my heart due to the references to Waikiki, where we migrate to every March like the humpback whales that swim each winter to Maui from as far away as Alaska.

It's obvious the discogs database for this luxuriously smooth saxophonist is incomplete.  Note the odd presence of American vibraphonist Mike Mainieri here, contributing a couple of songs on the records.  (Some of his solo albums were really good, if you remember.)  All the music starts to sound alike though, alternating between gentle fuzak instrumental to instrumental fuzak gentleness virtually imperceptibly.  My ears perked up at the lovely closer to Little Road Gang, called Still Like a Child, referencing (perhaps) the immortal Herbie's Speak Like a Child:





Sometimes uptempo sometimes more languid all the music really is the same as the above.
The earlier posted album, his last presumably, is his best.


Monday, 15 September 2014

Waikiki's Surf West and Kalakaua Boulevard by Kanzaki on the Road... from 1981




These guys did three smooth fusion albums in that very light Japanese style, all of which are relatively average for the genre but I couldn't resist posting this when I saw the first two songs on the second side: Waikiki Surf West, and Kalakaua Shuffle (the name of the main boulevard in Waikiki).  This was recorded at "Commercial Recording" of Hawai'i  way back in 1981, presumably in Honolulu.

Track A3 called Suite 246 - Aoyama Road is a highway in Japan.

Here's the song about Waikiki Beach's fabulous surf:





Not quite as composed as Jukka Linkola's opus on Hawai'i, but still real nice to hear for those like me who miss those beautiful garden islands...

I'm a bit puzzled by the title since the surf in general is better towards the east, closer to Diamond Head Crater, the west side features the family-friendly lagoon of the Hilton Hawaiian Village, favoured by my wife for maternal reasons.