Artist: Yosuke Yamashita, Bill Laswell, Ryuichi Sakamoto
Album: Asian Games
Genre: Free Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz, Future Jazz
Label: Verve Forecast
Released: 1993
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Melting Pot (Yamashita-Laswell-Skopelitis) - 7:14
- Chasin' the Air (Yamashita-Sakamoto) - 4:48
- Asian Games (Yamashita-Laswell-Skopelitis) - 6:53
- Ninja Drive (Yamashita-Laswell-Skopelitis) - 7:54
- Napping on the Bamboo (Yamashita-Sakamoto) - 5:50
- A Parade of Rain, the Moon and a Bride (Yamashita) - 2:46
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- Personnel:
- Yosuke Yamashita - piano, keyboards
- Bill Laswell - bass, prepared bass, sitar, sounds
- Nicky Skopelitis - Fairlight, sounds
- Aiyb Dieng - congas, gongs, tambourine, spring, cymbals
- Ryuichi Sakamoto - keyboards
The usually technophobic Yamashita teams up with tech-heads Bill Laswell and Ryuichi Sakamoto and comes up with an oddly bland record. The setup sounds awkward: Yamashita didn't really trust working "with machines," but Sakamoto designed a studio system of synthesizers and samplers to put the more analog jazzman at ease. Recorded in 1988, a few of the tracks bear strong similarities to Sakamoto's Neo Geo of that same year, particularly "Melting Pot" and "Ninja Drive." The former includes samples of the same Lebanese singer -- Dunya Yusin -- and song used on Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and New Order's "Angel Dust." It's a good track, with Laswell's bass keeping things simultaneously funky and intellectual. But many of these pieces here sound like a piano improviser lost in the middle of a sampledelic soundscape, with neither musician connecting (the question to ask is whether these tracks would not work without the piano -- the answer unfortunately says much about the album).
Review by Ted Mills