Kazumi Watanabe, Part 4 the Bands (1976 Milky Shade, 1980 Sunburst, 1981 Talk You All Tight, 1982 Ganaesia, 1983 Tibetan Blue...)

Some of the best music he made or recorded with are on Talk You and Ganaesia.

No surprise here because these recordings are under the artist name Kazumi Band, which featured as keyboardist our beloved Masanori Sasaji featured on this blog before here with his two brilliant fusion works from around the same period in time.

As well, he was in the one-off fusion outfit from 1980 called Sunburst, with the lovely photo of the old New York City with the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, and the Mainieri and Brecker band Steps posted on this blog to completion here.

From 1981's Talk you all tight, the astonishingly brilliant song title The Great Revenge of the Hong Kong Woman:

I love how he developed that octaved electric guitar riff almost instantly into synthesizer patterns a la Wakeman or Emerson, moving into various electric passages throughout a song that seems to keep changing every minute or two, never mind the wonderful duet solos between synth and electric guitar.

From 1982's Ganaesia, a track called Moenega with all the right fusionary moves: the unusual chords, the dramatic buildups, the crazy fast energy alternating with quieter passages, etc. and it all ends with some really stunning dissonant riffs:

These compositions are almost as good as the Sasaji stuff, I think you'll agree.

From Sunburst, Mysterious vibes is also quite delightful:

Kazumi Watanabe, Part 3 (1979 Kylyn, 1979 Kylyn Live, 1980 To Chi Ka, 1981 Dogatana, 1984 Mobo and 1985 Mobo Splash)

 

So far the best of the packages remains, in these albums he moved forward from the sweet fusion to slightly more European, composed, Frippian progressive style composition in many parts though the simple fusion remains here and there.  Notably, (1981) Dogatana's acoustic pieces are very much like a lot of gentler fusion we have heard here from the likes of Toto Blanke or low-key acoustic guitar/synth pieces from Jun Fukamachi.

Consider the track called Island:

On Kylyn Live, I was absolutely floored to hear a ballad vocals version of The River Must Flow, a song by Canadian Gino Vanelli who of course was exhaustively featured here before.  When Gino did the song he made it uptempo and funky, but here it's transformed into a somewhat latin or brazilian ballad and note that on top of that, it's sung by the much beloved Akiko Yano--no mistaking her style of singing.

The Frippian element evident on a track called Synapse, from 1985's Mobo Splash:

Kazumi Watanabe, Part 2 (1977 Guitar Workshop, 1977 Olive's Step, 1977 Village in Bubbles, 1978 Lonesome Cat, 1978 Mermaid Boulevard)

 

In the latter part of the 70s he hit homerun after homerun like my wife said so immortally: the ball never even stayed in the ballpark.  Having enjoyed all this music for the last several months I think I can easily say he has jumped to the top of the fusionary guitarists, top 10 for sure, although it wasn't until late that he got quite progressive (later in the 70s to early 80s as we will see).

The ST opener Olive's Step is brilliant from beginning to end, without a doubt:

I really love the composition Mermaid Boulevard from the album of the same name:

Kazumi Watanabe, Part 1 (1971 Infinite, 1975 Endless Way, 1977 Maduri, 1978 Concierto de Aranjuez, 1978 Kaleidoscope)

 

I haven't found an artist so unknown and prolific since James Vincent so long long ago.  He isn't quite as fantastically creative and original but he's a helluva composer in the trad. 70s fusion style we know and love so well and incredibly prolific, so much so that I had to divide his oeuvre into 4 parts each with 5-6 albums, I think 22 in total. Discography is here.

He did start slow in the 70s with the somewhat disappointing Infinite and Endless Way, too overloaded with extraneous improvisations in my opinion, as well as the way overplayed Concierto de Aranjuez which in comparison to other jazz performances/interpretations really leaves a lot to be desired.

But he fell into his own with Olive's Step which is in the next package (for some reason) and the brilliant, really outstanding from beginning to end Kaleidoscope LP.  

Maiden Voyage, from that one:

Syrius bootleg Demo 1973

This band is very well known in prog circles due to the 1971 release called Devil's Masquerade (the second 70s album is really disappointingly generic), discogs bio here:

Hungarian rock band, operating in the 60's and 70's. Syrius was founded in 1962 by Zsolt Baronits. The group performed dance music and pop-rock. After the breakup and reorganization began to play typical jazz rock and prog rock.

Of course, recently mentioned in relation to the Beramiada from Jackie Orszakzky, which was so wonderful.

I didn't realize they also put out a demo with unreleased material, of great interest. Here's a review from rym:

The good news is the versions of Crooked Man and In the Bosom of a Shout that close out this demo, at just under seven minutes and just under nine minutes respectively, blow the versions on Syrius out of the water. And they're immaculately recorded.

The bad news is the other four tracks aren't just nowhere near as good, they're terribly recorded as well. Not as terribly recorded as the last four tracks on Utolsó kiadás, but it's pretty bad. And the worst part: those four tracks are forty nine minutes of music. One of them's over twenty seven minutes long and doesn't go to nearly enough places to justify its length.

Still, those last two are probably worth tracking down.

That being said however, the track called Nyitany es indulo reminds me a lot of famed unreleased Romanian progressive outfit, Experimental Q, or Exp. Q2, which is just a wonderful thing:

I think that track actually makes the whole demo worth its price, which was nothing in my case.

This was well worth hearing and it possibly is better or more progressive than the original debut album.