KBB, Part 1: Lost and Found (2000), Age of Pain (2013)

 

KBB:

Japanese jazz rock fusion / progressive rock band led by violinist Akihisa Tsuboy since 1992.

So with the violin front and center, you can expect a kind of fusion similar to the TEE posted earlier here, not as much variety as the classic french ones (eg Didier Lockwood) unfortunately.  There's a lot of hammond and electric guitar, none of the more delicate chamber music type stuff, making it occasionally seem monochromatic.

Their first album is from 2000, more than 25 years ago now, and it's called Lost and Found.  A track called Divine Design reminds me a lot of classic Kenso, and that's a wonderful thing of course:

From the final one, coming out in 2013, called Age of Pain, the great emotional resonance of  Lythrum:

More from the Inoue Takayuki Band [1977 Bark at the Sun, 1979 Man who stole the Sun, 1980 Water Band Wagon

Inoue Takayuki made a lot of music, he was almost as prolific as our wonderful Yuji Ohno, the soundtrack master-- remember his James Dean, The First American Teenager?

Inoue's Sunrise from 1976 appeared back here, and probably is his best work for us (in the progressive fusion, or progressive OST vein).  Nonetheless I slogged through some other soundtracks that are available digitally, to see if there are any other gems.  So here are some or a few of them.

From The Man who Stole the Sun, which is databased on this page, a track called Tokyo Dept. Store Toilet:

And much else along the same lines.  Surprisingly the 1980 one is not as good as the 70s music.

I'm going to post some more interesting Japanese music in the next few weeks, there's a whole ton of stuff from back in the day and then more hailing from recent decades: some fusion, some prog-fusion, and some true-blue classic prog rock too. No basic jazz, no simple folk, no humdrum pop, no ordinary, trite, commonplace sounds at all for at least I think a 'fortnight' of albums, perhaps more...   

And all from Japan, source in recent years on here of so many rare gems.  Stay tuned.

 

Linda Hoyle [Affinity] in her 1971 album Pieces of Me [FLAC limited time only] plus 2015's The Fetch

 

I was rooting around for stuff to discover and noticed this one, from the singer of well-known one-off UK band Affinity.  Amazingly, it turned out the compositions are mostly from Karl Jenkins-- of Soft machine fame, of course.  And I really love his stuff from the albums he mostly wrote, like Rubber Riff and Cockayne.  

But back to Pieces of Me.  You can see it databased here.  Sadly, this is Linda's only album from this time period.

British jazz rock singer, songwriter and art therapist, born Linda Hoile, in Hammersmith/London 13 April 1946.

As you probably are aware, Karl wrote some amazing music for the band Soft Machine, but also for library albums.

Paper Tulips sounds like a poem (presumably, written by Linda) which was set to music by Karl and moreover arranged by him:

Morning of One takes up the same heartbreak theme and is just as amazing:

There is also a cover of Laura Nyro's Lonely Woman, and a Nina Simone song.  An amazing album, sadly forgotten and neglected despite its strength.  Surprisingly then nothing more from Linda-- until the mid 2010s when she came back with Fetch, which without Karl is not as strong. I included that one for comparison purposes. As a sample, Cut and Run (lyrics by Linda, music by Mo Foster):

What's even more remarkable about this already amazing work is the fact Karl Jenkins, so far as I know, never wrote this kind of lushly produced ssw stuff again, moving on as he did in the 1970s to the fusion sounds of Nucleus and Soft Machine, plus the libraries.  We can assume too that Linda returned or proceeded to an ordinary life after this was released.

But thanks so much for this little lost gem, Linda and Karl...

Gayle Moran's I Loved You Then, from 1979

 

Gayle Moran is Mrs. Chick Corea. She did sing on some of his albums with RtF, but not all of them -- I believe. Their first one of course featured Flora Purim, recall.  (I much prefer their hard-assed fusion sound rather than the vocal songs with Spanish influence.)

Anyways it's surprising she didn't release more albums, and her songs are definitely lacking any of that, being more based in classical music, evidently she plays the piano too. Her husband plays on some tracks, and Stanley Clarke, his formidable fusioneer bassist, appears as well. Other luminaries on here: Bunny Brunel, Al Jarreau, trumpeter Al Vizutti, Melissa Manchester. They are probably all scientologists, because surprisingly the little-known actress ex-wife of Tom Cruise, Mimi Rogers, does some finger snapping on one track too, perhaps trying to wake up L. Ron?  The music is definitely not fusion, it's just as you'd expect with classical-based piano-accompanied songwriting, but it tries very hard to be interesting and original with tenderness-- and succeeds often.

In any case, the title track just absolutely blew me away-- as a progressive songwriting type of epic it's almost as gorgeously transcendent as Joni Mitchell's masterpiece, Paprika Plains that I've mentioned so many times in these pages:

I was really sad to see there were no other albums apart from this one, but you could say it wasn't meant to come out in this year, 1979, it belongs to an earlier more naive time perhaps.  Now let's hope the church of scientology doesn't sue me. All hail Xenu.

Jean-Philippe Goude and Olivier Cote in Jeunes Annees 1976, by request

Discogged here.  I posted him before, in relation to the wonderful Gymnastique (1979) and Meli-Melodies (1981) albums, and Drone, which came in between, is the one he's most famous for I guess.  In later years he wrote more classical style chamber music which is also beautiful, usually involving a grand piano playing simple patterns with violins weaving in and out of it, but altogether not so varied as these early works. Having said that, I do really love De Anima, and La Divine Nature des Choses.  Even a couple of years ago he released Salon Noir, which is still quite similar.  The overall quite melancholy sound to his work is appealing to me, in particular at those times when I read the world news.

Olivier Cote on the other hand is the percussionist on this first album from 1976, but Goude wrote most of the music.  I think here the zeuhl influence is most prominent-- after all he was a member of the great Weidorje band, with Paganotti and Patrick Gauthier.  

Consider the second track called Piege (trap):

And how can you not admire the sheer oddness of his Melodie, especially with the odd synth sound buzzing there in the background: