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Marc Medwin: A question for the group: How do you approach listening to this music? One of the things that has always fascinated me is the language people use, the way what needs to be known before or during listening, when they talk about the sounds themselves, whether practitioners or what Anthony Braxton calls friendly experiencers. Bill, you make the comparison to similar European experiments of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and there also, we read that a certain kind of initiation is necessary, a change in thinking, of perception. Just look at the aphorisms in the liners to AMM's first album! We also know that Takayanagi had at least one disciple, Akira Mejima, and some of Takayanagi's ideas are articulated in the Axis/Another Revolvable Thing liner notes. So what? When you're listening, does all that make a difference, and what do you bring to the experience?

Jonathan Shaw: As a "friendly experiencer" (if I am getting the sense of that right), I listen to this with ears wide open and let it register as affect. I don't have the right schemas for responding intellectually to this stuff, and I also lack a finely grained understanding of the moment in Japanese politics and culture. So, I vibe with the music. It's a very, very serious set of vibes.

Marc Medwin: Same!! I know some of Kaoru Abe's work, and that's about it!

Michael Rosenstein: Context is an interesting question with this music. I'm pretty sure my first introduction to Takayanagi was in the early 1990s with the first CD issue of April Is the Cruellest Month and the P.S.F. issues of Call In Question, and Live Independence which were all stocked at Twisted Village, a fantastic record store in Boston staffed by super-knowledgeable folks who pointed me at them. This was around the same time that I saw Otomo Yoshihide's Ground Zero at Festival de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Yoshihide studied with Takayanagi and frequently references his work so a connection may have also been drawn there.

The music grabbed me immediately but all the releases had liner notes entirely in Japanese, so I had no idea where it was coming from. Oddly, aside from some cursory articles I've read, that is still pretty much the case. For the 15 years or so prior to hearing these, I was listening pretty much exclusively to free jazz/free improvisation and Takayanagi somehow melded with things like the Voice Crack/Borbetomagus collaboration, Otomo's projects at the time or Caspar Brötzmann's groups and collaborations with his father which, amongst other listening around then, opened my ears to the noisier end of things.  

As Bill points out, for a musician with a discography running over 50 releases, most are next-to-impossible to get outside of Japan or long out of print and expensive when they were in print. But along the way, I managed to pick up a decent handful though I hadn't listened to them in a while. So, diving back in now to listen, there's a certain nostalgia for me which I am enjoying. 

Bill Meyer: How do I approach any music? If I already have a sufficient grasp of the language, I listen for how well the music uses that language, however broadly those terms can be defined. If I don’t already know the language, my first question is usually, what’s going on? In such cases, if the music hooks me but I can’t figure it out quickly, I’m doubly hooked. If the question is, how do I approach listening to Takayanagi and New Directions Unity, my beginning stance, when I first heard Call In Question and Live Independence in the middle 1990s, was to try to relate them to other, somewhat contemporary and somewhat similar improvised music, such as Sonny and Linda Sharrock and the records that put Peter Brötzmann and Derek Bailey together. It stubbornly remained its own thing, and I checked in on those two CDs every so often and kept wondering. Then, when April Is the Cruelest Month was reissued, I heard it and thought, this is the closest that free jazz has come to the Stooges’ attempt to make free jazz, ie “L.A. Blues.” Having listened more frequently and closely to 1970s vintage Takayanagi for a couple years now, my listening has shifted from “what’s going on here” to “what’s going on in this specific piece.” I’m forever trying to figure out how much of this music involves intentional response, and how much involves Takayanagi’s associates following his instructions not to listen to each other, but having varying degrees of success in their efforts to project energy without to some degree being influenced by other the sound energy sources (i.e. other players) with whom they were sharing space.  

Tim Clarke: Takayanagi's control over feedback is insane. At times his guitar sounds like a swarm of rabid penny whistles! Upon first listen, this music is overwhelming but fascinating. I'm looking forward to exploring further.  

Marc Medwin: Ha!! Which track were you listening to?  

Bill, I hadn't thought about the connection to the Peter Brötzmann and Derek Bailey sessions but now that you bring it up, I can definitely hear that now.  

This is a bit tangential to the recordings at hand, but I do wonder why Takayanagi didn't play with (or maybe just record with) visiting musicians from outside of Japan (aside from the recording he made with John Zorn.) Musicians he played with like Kaoru Abe, Sabu Toyozumi, Motoharu Yoshizawa and Masahiko Togashi collaborated with visitors. Of course, that all may have to do with what was recorded and released. The reality may be completely different.  

Bill Meyer: I don't know if Takayanagi played with Westerners at all. New Direction Unit played at the Moers festival in Europe in 1980. But Takayanagi was a legendarily ornery guy, and aside from his work with Abe, I wonder if he played much in settings where he wasn't the boss.   

And as far as comparisons to Peter Brötzmann and Derek Bailey are concerned, there just weren't that many guitarists who worked in a way that incorporated both freedom and ample amplification. When Ayler tried it, he got someone from Canned Heat, and the music they made was pretty groove-oriented.   

Jonathan Shaw: So far as I have listened, groove-oriented this ain't.  

Tim Clarke: Marc, the track I was listening to with the penny-whistle feedback is "Excavation." Lots of space on that one, so you can hear him moving around the neck, then pausing to lean into the amp to trigger the feedback.  

Actually, Bill, do you have the liner notes? That might actually be someone playing woodwinds amidst the feedback on "Excavation"?  

Marc Medwin: Yeah, that's difficult to get the ear around isn't it, because the bent pitches often occur simultaneously!! My guess is that there really is some sort of flute/recorder/penny whistle involved, some pretty serious listening and communication!  

Bill Meyer: I believe that the whistling sound was a “folk pipe” played by Motoharu Yoshizawa.   

Jennifer Kelly: I am way out of my element here but it’s funny you mentioned Stooges, Bill, because I was thinking about Bill Brovold’s work with Larval, one of the only people I know with connections to the NYC noise avant-garde and the Stooges.  

The drumming on “Excavation” is unhinged.  

Marc Medwin: Yes! And let's be honest, isn't there something just a little unhinged about the whole thing? No disrespect meant here, I hope that's obvious, but music like this necessitates a leap into uncertainty, a going out of depth, some sort of traveling beyond preconceptions, even the ones you bring from moment to moment as the sounds evolve. Just a bit of a tangent here: We're getting into the "free jazz" part of my jazz history course right now. I'm as interested in the words the students use to describe what they're hearing as I am in the music itself! It's easy, now that half a century has passed, to forget just how courageous these performers and those kindred spirits really were!  

Never heard of Larval...

Bryon Hayes: I guess I’m the only newcomer that started by checking out the Eclipse LP first.  I really connected with its nervous, agitated atmosphere and gradual increase in energy.  Afterward, I began exploring Station 70 and was immediately blown away by the sense of the unhinged, to quote Jenn and Marc.  I’m excited to digest it further. 

Bill Meyer: One thing I really appreciate about the Station 70 box is the way it takes two CDs of seething, intense music, and then adds a previously unavailable side that is even more over the top. 

This is music that leaves everything behind and embraces that uncertainty with absolute conviction. Takayanagi was a really challenging guy, known for calling out club owners, writers and other players if they didn't measure up to his standards at a musical, perceptual or ethical level. It's worth noting that he didn't just go further and further out. In later years, he played solo concerts that sound and look a bit like if AMM's Keith Rowe decided he wanted to sound like a live Throbbing Gristle record, and also some lyrical, jazz-rooted stuff. Whatever he did, he tried to do in a pure way, and he didn't have any patience for those who failed to match that determination. 

I think that Eclipse really distills the arc from abstract tension to fearsome explosion.  

Anyone have more thoughts? 

Marc Medwin: I do.  

First, and in a way, this sums up sentiments in previous posts, but it's so rare today that we find a "free jazz" musician, like Takayanagi, involved in so many facets of improvised music's history. William Parker and Anthony Braxton come to mind, but being of later generations, both began on the freer side of things rather than expanding their universes in quite the way Takayanagi did. Second, that sense of palpability, of bleeding-chunk passionate involvement, a kind of life-and-death involvement, has been such a joy to hear in more detail! Coincidentally, and somewhat tangentially, I just discovered the work of a composer from Canada named Paul Dolden. His Jericho series, Beyond the Walls of Jericho in particular reminded me of the affirming aggression of Takayanagi and company. He unleashes the fury of 100 freely improvising soloists, some pretty dangerous stuff for which Takayanagi, Kaoru and like-minded spirits set the table. Finally, a big thank-you from me to Blank Forms for everything they've done to document art between the lines, not to mention blurring and establishing all manner of boundaries! 

Christian Carey: The thing that most impresses me is the timeline. "Free Jazz" and "Ascension" were less than a decade old when a burgeoning free improv scene established itself in Japan. The more time I spend with the evolution of new music, the more I am impressed by the tautness of the timeline. It is all too easy for us, listening back decades, to forget how quickly Takayanagi was essentially able to world-build, alongside a small cohort of colleagues, and to create a distinctive branch of musical experimentation. 

Michael Rosenstein: I like the notion that Christian brings up about a "tautness of timeline," particularly with Takayanagi. If you listen to the music he was playing as part of Masahiko Togashi's Quartet in March of 1969, only one year before the Station '70 session was recorded, you can still hear vestiges of jazz in his playing.

I wasn't aware of this, but he was continuing to balance his jazz background with the music of his that I'm familiar with in the early 1970s. There's a full-on jazz session called A Jazzy Profile of Jo Jo recorded the same month as the Station '70 session where he is playing full-toned jazz guitar in a session of standards with a piano/bass/drums quartet with an uncredited horn section. Takayanagi was also the guitarist in a series of studio and live sessions with the Gil Evans Orchestra when they played in Japan in 1972 as well as a Sadao Watanabe full-on fusion session in 1972 where he shreds a bit more. Go figure!!!!

A Jazzy Profile of Jo Jo (1970)

Masabumi Kikuchi With Gil Evans (1972)

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Sadao Watanabe Quintet & Masayuki Takayanagi (1972)

But in the Station '70 sessions, those vestiges had become totally obliterated, with a willful "unhingedness" that several have mentioned above. His embrace of feedback is particularly intriguing. While he'd started to utilize it a bit in the studio session, Independence, from 1969, in these live sessions, it had become a central part of his strategies toward playing. Clearly that has been embraced by the entire ensemble. And that previously unissued version of "Mass Projection" takes it right over the edge. 

By 1975, when Eclipse and April Is the Cruelest Month were recorded, he had integrated the caustic shredding of Station '70 with free improvisation leanings and that playing, to me, is what still grabs me the most. I've never heard his later table-top guitar recordings which, as far as I know, haven't made it out of Japan so I'm hoping those will surface in the Black Editions series. 

Christian Carey: Also consider how close Hendrix was in time to these explorations! 

Bill Meyer: Here are the other titles in the projected Black Editions reissue campaign.  

Adding feedback and volume makes sense, since those became options for guitarists to very abruptly change their sound in the 1960s. And the sudden rate of change has a precedent in John Coltrane’s transitions, which at the time would have been very recent history. What I find really singular is Takayanagi’s ability to express active hostility towards  jazz and other people playing it, while somehow holding out the option to keep playing it himself. He was one ornery guy, and very particular in how he adhered to ethical and aesthetic principles.  

Here’s a brief sample of his tabletop action near the end of his life: 

And yet, at the same time, he was also able to do creative work within the idiom, as evidenced by this recording:

Referring to himself as a “part-time singer” is just one of the instances in these interviews in which Tomokawa oscillates between total self-deprecation and utterly shameless boasting, sometimes in the same breath. But however he wants to characterize himself, the fact remains that even as a part-time activity, Tomkawa's singing easily inhabits the realm of absolutely bone-chilling, eviscerating emotion. To wit, “The Flower of Youth,” the opening track on his debut album Finally, His First Album, documents the then- 25-year-old's defiant scream into a black void. Sung against a simple two-chord guitar pattern that would not sound out of place on a Daniel Johnston record, Tomokawa sets the stage for all his work to come, shrieking out a litany of declarations against himself and God:

In that tiny room in Kawasaki Kawasaki Sharpening a knife Sharpening a knife in the early morning Ain’t that me? Slicing up your dreams just because you’re tired Dicing yourself up just because you’re frustrated But you can’t even kill a single cockroach! Go ahead and do it, kill if you can kill! Go ahead and do it, kill if you can kill!

The rest of Finally, His First Album navigates its way through elegiac folk rock (“Soul”), full-blown blues rockers (“Protest, Age 23”), hebephrenic screes (“Phone Call”), ghostly 3/4 ballads (“Grave”), traditional-sounding Japanese numbers (“An Akita Folksong Run Amok”) and sweet folk crooning (“Yumiko's Spring”). This inventory of styles might seem like a splattershot approach, but, across all these jarring musical detours, Tomokawa's fantastically evocative singing ties everything seamlessly together. One could easily place these recordings in the realm of ancient Greek poetry as sung by the bards. A sense of pathos suffuses each track on this LP. However, one gets the feeling at times that Tomokawa might not be that particular about the setting for his voice and lyrics, even though he always seems able to adapt to whatever his producer and band throw at him in the way of accompaniment. And he does so with unabashed aplomb on each track, easily surpassing any reservations one might have about the record’s smorgasbord of styles.

Including a photo of his late grandfather with the liner notes, Tomokawa's second release Straight from the Throat opens in a similar manner to his debut: the track “Grandpa” sets alternating exposed-nerve singing and banshee falsetto cries against repetitive acoustic guitar and, later in the track, an avalanche of cataclysmic drum set accompaniment from Tomokawa's long-time drummer, friend and musical inspiration, Toshio Ogiwara. Calling this track visionary would be a gross understatement. It foreshadows by decades the ideas of Freak Folk and New Weird America, but with the addition of Tomokawa's absolutely blood-chilling vocalizations. Segueing into the next track “Goddamn Winter,” the listener might get the idea they've just passed through some alternate reality portal, as the mood shifts radically into something like a folk ballad with wistful Roy Bittan electric piano flourishes. Still, it’s just great.

Straight from the Throat proceeds in a similar fashion to the first LP, ricocheting from musical style to style with little regard for sense of direction, other than the consistently mind-shattering singing and devastating lyrics:

I can see sorrow from up on the footbridge A salesman-type walks by Wiping the sweat from his brow Inside its cage, a bird thrashed wildly till it died Wilted, drooping red chili blossoms I can see sorrow from up on the footbridge I don’t want to die I don’t want to die, I don’t Maybe songs are a kind of cage

With the track “Don’t Kill the Sea Lions,” Tomokawa even scored something of a hit, taking a detour from his existential rumblings by evoking the angst of these suffering animals and the coarse indifference of people to their environment:

Bored housewives glancing at the tube Dying to find out how many they killed today The men can’t raise their faces to look up higher than they are tall While the children’s faces turned the color of concrete A dream is the dream of a dream dream dream . . . . . . Don’t kill the sea lions Don’t kill the sea lions We’re all sea lions Don’t shoot! Hey, don’t shoot! Stop, hey, don’t shoot me! You there! Don’t shoot me!

Uncannily enough, some of this record's text evokes Springsteen's lyrical turn on “Born to Run”, released just one year earlier. See “Cars–A Poem for My Little Borther”; here Tomokawa reveals a sharp eye for life's more banal details as a tableau vivant of intense passion (and we should bear in mind that Tomokawa’s brother was a suicide):

The young cars howled through the vastness At blistering speed A police car following hot on their tail Ready with a mountain of complaints A hearse drove by: Forget all that and return everything to the soil 

Straight from the Throat closes out with “Stone,” a kind of nod at things to come with blanketing keyboard banks, something approaching a severely detuned West Coast whistle synth and spoken text—as if Dr. Dre and Brian Eno found themselves in the studio together when Tomokawa happened to be passing by, and they yanked him in.

The third CD of this box set, A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth, starts with a vaguely New Wave atmosphere of keyboard synths and punctuating drum accents before, depressingly enough, collapsing into a Classic-Rock-à-la-David-Gilmour wailing guitar solo. Mercifully, Tomokawa has not attempted to add anything to this track. But he kicks back in on the second piece, “Try Saying You're Alive.” The song pretty much sums up what Tomokawa is all about, as he demolishes his guitar and cries out in a nerve-on-edge, quivering voice:

This world is no slaughterhouse! So why all the anguished melodrama? This loneliness, kindness, suffering and pain You’re no cripple! So why are you dabbling in the joy of sorrow? Hippy vagabond beggar child You call that life? Try saying you’re alive! Try saying you’re alive! Try saying you’re alive!

It just doesn't get any better than this. The intensity, the sheer desperation, reaching for straws in the eternal darkness. And then, another rollercoaster ride, skidding into the third piece, “Kill or Be Killed.” It’s tender and sweet, a soothing respite from the previous track. Tomokawa seems to inhabit a Jekyll-and-Hyde world. Either it's a glorious summer day or he’s going through a nervous breakdown. And the middle ground is a wasteland of jarred emotions played out across a vicious hangover, and the sense that at any moment we could die an incredibly torturous death.

A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth conjures up a potpourri of styles as in Tomokawa's first two LP's, though by this time one gets the impression that perhaps he's lost some interest in the whole studio process. His band and the overall production seem more in the forefront than on the first two LPs, and, quite frankly, some of the musical decisions are less than fortunate. Like the last track of the record, “Missed My Time to Die,” blends what could be a demented Klezmer melody line with some absolutely cheesy funk guitar strumming. Still, time and time again, Tomokawa manages to surmount all these musical obstacles with absolutely compelling vocals and powerful lyrics:

Long lines snake Through town again today Give me your sadness Give me your sadness The women stand in line I can’t walk sober And I can’t walk drunk The gaggle of skulls is weeping And glaring at me Hey! Got a problem?

Tomokawa went on to record another 30-odd records after the first three documented here. He enjoyed something of a resurgence in the 1990s with his recordings for the Tokyo PSF label, also known for the work of Fushitsusha, Keiji Haino and High Rise. In his introduction to Tomakawa's collection of interviews, Try Saying You're Alive! Damon Krukowski notes, it's “not always the meaning of the words that gets a song across. Great singers always communicate, regardless.” And indeed, whether one is fluent in Japanese or can't understand one single word of it, the voice of Kazuki Tomokawa will fill you with a lust for life and a deep compassion for all sentient beings around us. These are exceptional qualities we could use now more than ever. So, yes: Try Saying You’re Alive!

Takayanagi is joined by winds player Kenji Mori, bassist Nobuyoshi Ino and percussionist Hiroshi Yamazaki. From the very first notes of “Fragment I (Gradually Projection),” it’s apparent that the NDU isn’t going to reenter the firestorm that most listeners expect from the group. And yet it’s filled with just enough intensity. The overriding impression I get from this date is its similarity — in timbre, technique, and sensibility — to the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Certainly the emphasis on small gestures, like a sustained soft snare roll or a chirrup from an ocarina, lends itself to that comparison. But in the middle of it is the astoundingly forward-thinking guitar. Takayanagi can blaze so dynamically, it’s jaw-dropping the way he thoroughly he mangles his strings with slides, thwacks, twangs, all manner of futuristic noise madness.

As “Fragment I” flows into “Fragment II,” things grow even softer, with a furtive bass clarinet and inventive punctuations making for more sustained focus and intensity. Jagged arco slashes or choked chords drop, and silence returns, the whole of the performance seeming to boil away everything essential, leaving the softest pick bouncing off a string or the most fragile chirp. By the time they reach the lengthy, spacious percussion solo in “Fragment III,” it’s almost as if the other players need a break from music of such technical accomplishment in the softest dynamic register.

Whereas the tracks on disc one were labeled “gradually,” those on the rowdier second disc are labeled “mass.” Arco and gongs hint at things to come, and as the music takes shape over the course of its introductory phases, hints of melody are certainly there from darting flute. But the overriding element is Takayanagi’s feedback, mewling and sustained and very ominous. As Yamazaki heats things up, exploring the full range of his tuned toms, Takayanagi leans into his wah pedal, straining with the energy. Throughout, nothing ever fully boils over, which makes the whole that much more impressive. There are passages of biting soprano and echo-drenched percussion, impressionistic feedback daubs and the occasional brash declamation, scrapes and groans in the echo chamber. Even at its most intense, the music here is full of heat but stops short of the absolute dive-bombing madness of some other Takayanagi sides. And that’s really its strength, showing that the guitarist wasn’t merely a shredder but a player of focused energy and invention. His guitar quavers, moans, and chirps, bouncing and pick-scraping with alien wonder.