YOSUKE YAMASHITA 山下洋輔 — Yosuke Yamashita / Bill Laswell / Ryuichi Sakamoto : Asian Games (review)

YOSUKE YAMASHITA 山下洋輔 — Yosuke Yamashita / Bill Laswell / Ryuichi Sakamoto : Asian Games album cover Album · 1993 · Jazz Related Electronica/Hip-Hop Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
snobb
"Asian Games" is an odd album. Japanese pianist Yosuke Yamashita, with the exception of Masahiko Satoh, is the most respected creative piano jazz master in the country, who started his career playing in the renowned Akira Sakata's avant-garde jazz trio in the early 70s. Here on "Asian Games", he is mentioned as leader/co-leader playing in an all-star international quintet with Japanese (non-jazz) keyboards/electronic star Ryuichi Sakamoto, Senegalese percussionist Aiyb Dieng, and two Americans - bassist Bill Laswell and synth player Nicky Skopelitis. Recorded in 1988 in New York and Tokyo studios, the album was released for the first time only five years later, in 1993.

As one can expect from the line-up, "Asian Games" differs from Yamashita's early acoustic trio avant-garde jazz or even more current post-bop works. The album's music is heavily based on Fairlight industrial sounds, programmed by Nicky Skopelitis with the addition of Aiyb Dieng's metal percussion and bells. Yamashita for the first time plays keyboards beside his regular piano. Bill Laswell adds bass and different effects.

Laswell is responsible for the final album's sound very much, since all recorded material was mixed, overwritten, and arrangements made by him on SSL studio computer. As a result, on this album we have quite typical Laswell's electronic jazz with overdubs with danceable Sakamoto keys and adjective Yamashita's "organic" piano soloing over it. In his memoirs, the studio session's technician wrote: "The piano playing, the guide through this sonic land of the dead, is Yosuke".

The album's opening track "Melting Pot" features a sample from Music in the World of Islam, Volume One: The Human Voice, which was also used in Regiment and Qu'ran on the seminal album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts by Brian Eno & David Byrne. In general, some things in the album's music could attract fans of Bill Laswell, or to a lesser degree, Ryuichi Sakamoto's fans too. Yamashita's piano doesn't sound authentic here and quite often there's a feeling that without it, the music would be more organic.
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