Masanori Sasaji in Hot Taste Jam (1980) and Hell-tor Skeltor (1981)

This is a wonderful and unknown composer, listed here, who started off with two brilliant fusion albums incorporating classical composition and then went on to make soundtrack music which was more banal.  I'll hit you right off the bat with my favourite track, called Love Survival, from the first LP,  Hot Taste Jam:





With the classical soprano singer, this is like the composed prog/fusion of Francois Breant or of course certain albums by Fukumachi, or Yanagida, etc.  From the first strange chord on, I just love the sheer oddness of the melody and the way the chords change unexpectedly underneath it like huge surprise waves.  It's obvious he mastered fully the progressive style and was trained in composition presumably through university.  If you look at the remainder of the song titles (Spankin' Stuff, the title track itself), however, it's also obvious we have to endure a lot of lighter, commercial-aiming fusion too.  Same on the second record, a lot of simplistic stuff.  I thought there's no way that a cover version of Helter Skelter could be in here, but I was dead wrong.  I'm sorry, but it's gotta be one of the worst Beatles interpretations I've ever heard.

On the other hand Sasaji the composer went all-out on the second side of the second record, with a progressive opus that just knocks me right out of there.  In some ways it reminds me of a very mature, creative Patrick Moraz with the keyboards dominance, like a fusion piano concerto.  It ends with a track called Abandoned that nicely complements the Love Survival from the first LP:





In some places it's also like Chick Corea's magnum opus (to me) about the Leprechaun.  But in a way, it's packed with more ideas in it.  And the lovely sung passage really takes it over the top in masterpiece status.