YOSUKE YAMASHITA 山下洋輔 — Yosuke Yamashita Trio ‎: Frozen Days (review)

YOSUKE YAMASHITA 山下洋輔 — Yosuke Yamashita Trio ‎: Frozen Days album cover Album · 1975 · Avant-Garde Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
snobb
After some success of his early releases and strong following from underground scene fans,one among best Japanese jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita released series of very strong albums,which never received true fame. Mid-70s in Japan (and even more that - in Western world) were years of fusion fever and yesterday's free jazz stars were almost forgotten in one day.

"Frozen Days" released in 1975 is one of such Yamashita's album, and it's very special on its own manner.Cover photo is a piece of art itself - all three trio members are pictured in a rural environment, most probably a barn, in a very last autumn's day when sun is a rare guest,it's still no snow outside, but dry grass with first traces of frost on it shows that another short warm season is finished. Every time I look on this cover it recalls me Haruki Murokami's "A Wild Sheep Chase", excellent Japanese existentialist book about fragility and meaningless of life,which came seven years after "Frozen Days" has been released.

Yosuke,originally heavily influenced by Cecil Taylor, here plays lighter, less percussive and more expressionistic. Saxophonist Akira Sakata, regular Yamashita's trio member and future Japanese scene star, is not so noisy as often too. He is still full of explosive energy, but it's better controlled and his liquid soloing is touched by melancholy. As very often in Japanese jazz, here is enough space for silence, but somehow all music is extremely well framed on a manner of artistic miniature.

All three musicians still play as on any other of trio's album of that time - as if their lives depend on it, but it's a rare album where attentive listener can hear that they as well play as if there is no tomorrow. And surprisingly, there almost is no feel of drama, just understanding, accepting it as higher power and Buddhist reconciliation.

Being of the same highest technical level as some other Yamashita's works of that time, "Frozen Days" is different by that very unique not only for Yamashita's music, but for Japanese jazz in whole,colored with wide gamma of emotions.It is not "Samurai jazz" anymore, it's "Haruki Murakami jazz",find this album and probably you will be seriously surprised.
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