Rare music seems to be in our midst this week, with two albums that were never supposed to be released outside Japan making their way into the world, spreading funk, City Pop and post-punk. Jazz legend Mary Lou Williams gets her Zodiac Suite performed by Brooklyn-based, Korean-born bassist Jeong Lim Yang at SF JAZZ. Oakland’s SPELLLING is back with a new album release, and the lead single is striking and needs to be heard. Hip-hop dignitaries De La Soul will release what was once just a fan’s pipe dream of a get.
It’s Under The Stars; spend some time with us…..
TOKYO BLISS—JAPANESE FUNK, BOOGIE & CITY POP FROM KING RECORDS 1974-88 SELECTED BY DJ NOTOYA (WEWANTSOUNDS)
5,810 miles. That’s the distance between Japan and the United States. Is it far? After listening to Tokyo Bliss, the free and easy selection of funk and boogie recorded in Japan for King Records in the ’70s and ’80s, selected by Japanese tastemaker DJ Notoya, you’d think that trip was just a hop and skip by bus.
Japan’s love for music from the United States has been written about excessively. Facts.
What needs to be zoomed in on is the uncanny ability of one country—a culture—to not just love another country’s music but to get the ripples, the quirks that burst through in the music.
I had a blast, just straight up groovin’ to 2022’s vinyl compilation of City Pop music, Tokyo Glow, selected by DJ Notoya. It was fire, for sure. Combustible.
But this edition, Tokyo Bliss, catches something so much more extensive—microgenres between the bump and groove.
That’s, at least to me, always something that takes the cake. I’m down for the turn-on-the-turbo-boosters type funk. Like Mami Ayukawa’s “Sabita Gambler,” a cross between Debbie Gibson, lost on the other side of the tracks after Midnight, and early Robert Palmer in his 100-models-surrounding-him phase.
It thumps, for sure.
But there is nuance in the lead-off track, called “Garasumado” by the folk duo Buzz. It’s the Carpenters turned on by some aged slow-release acid skew. Or the quiet storm jewel “Fade In Youmei” by Keiko Toda that feels like it’s playing in the ending credits for Ron Howard’s debut comedy film NightShift. Even Yuko Imai’s “Hotel Twilight” is draped in the dramatics of ’80s London royalty act Swing Out Sister.
Tokyo Bliss is still loaded with funk and boogie jewels that will blow down a dancefloor, but it’s in between the jawns that you’ll hear a country and a culture yearning to dance and sway along with a world miles away.
Pre-order here.
JEONG LIM YANG PLAYS MARY LOU WILLIAMS’ ZODIAC SUITE, JAN 26 AT SFJAZZ’S JOE HENDERSON LAB
Mary Lou Williams—pianist, arranger, and composer—still to this day does not get the due that’s owed to her input on America’s classical music, which we refer to as jazz. She passed away in 1981 at the age of 71, and left behind a tidal wave of output: hundreds of arrangements and more than one hundred records in all formats of the time (78, 45, LPs), plus contributions for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. What sometimes gets missed is that on top of all her accolades, she was a friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie. So if she’s their mentor, what does that say about her excellence?
The Brooklyn-based, Korean-born bassist Jeong Lim Yang will amplify this sometimes-overlooked brilliance by performing Williams’ classically influenced Zodiac Suite, in which each of the twelve parts corresponds to a sign of the zodiac, on Jan 26 at SF JAZZ Joe Henderson Lab. Williams accordingly dedicated the suite to several of her musical colleagues, including Billie Holiday and Art Tatum. She recorded the suite with Jack Parker and Al Lucas and performed it on December 31, 1945, at The Town Hall in New York City with an orchestra and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.
Inspired by Duke Ellington’s landmark Black, Brown, and Beige, a classic, Williams began writing Zodiac Suite in 1942 for a chamber jazz group and composed each movement inspired by jazz artists born under each sign. It was later adapted for a 70-piece orchestra at the request of legendary promoter Norman Granz and was performed at Carnegie Hall in 1946.
Jeong Lim Yang’s Zodiac Suite: Reassured from 2022 was universally praised for being a bold, celebratory interpretation not just of a pioneering arranger and musician but also of Yang’s creativity in interpreting the music for a trio.
These types of “slips through the cracks” performances, steadily booked at SFJAZZ here in San Francisco, send a clear and direct message to the world that SF remains a jazz-forward-thinking city. Expect nothing but brilliance from Yang and her trio.
Grab tickets here.
SPELLLING, PORTRAIT OF MY HEART (SACRED BONES)
As predicted a couple of weeks back, we knew something was coming soon from Oakland’s SPELLLING aka Chrystia Cabral, and we knew it’d be on the side of epic: That’s how she rolls, real epic.
But from the sounds of the lead single, same name as the album, it’s her finest take on progressive rock arrangements. A well-produced vision board signaling an elevated direction this time out.
In a 2023 interview with KQED Cabral explained she struggled being an outsider during her youth while growing up in the ‘burbs of Sacremento as a “biracial, mixed, weird, freaky person.”
All of those scenarios, emotions, feelings, and uncertainty have unlocked freedom in Cabral, so that with each new release, she’s unbound and actually headstrong in her music, traveling into new arrangements, which makes her always one to watch when the new project drops, because who knows what’s on the board. Those artists seem to be in small supply these days.
As she explains: “When the lyrics for the title track (on this project) came together, it started to morph everything in this more energetic direction, instead of this more whimsical landscape that I’ve worked with before. It started to become more driven, higher energy, more focused. And I have a big affection for it because of that. I love that it feels like it withstood transformation, which is something I always want to aspire to with things that I make. I want them to have this sense of timelessness. It could exist like this, or like that, or like this, but this is the one for right now.”
The tour kicks off at the Great American Music Hall on April 4 and ends in Reno on May 19. It’s reported that it will include stops in Los Angeles, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, NYC, Detroit, and Chicago.
Big things are in store.
Pre-order here.
SO-DO, STUDIO WORKS ’82-’85 (TIME CAPSULE)
The late ’70s to mid-’80s was a rousing musical period, unleashing a slew of groups that could be identified as the post-punk movement. Their ability to take pop, disco, dub, funk, punk, old-fogey ’70s rawk and transform it into a lane where anything goes, well, that’s a generation tossing a middle finger at… somebody.
And while Americans might or might not have been listening to its disaffected youth, Japan was.
The Time Capsule imprint, out of London, has consistently come through with rare and private press music from Japan that originally was not supposed to be released to the world. Their upcoming SO-DO, STUDIO WORKS ’82-’85 release, illuminates the long-lost post-punk/new wave band, letting the world know that bands like the Police or artists such as Adrian Belew, Chaz Jankel, and Arthur Russell did not just shake CBGB’s or Paradise Garage floor in the states.
Those same ideas about fusing rock and groove, dub, and synthwave approach, breaking down barriers in dance clubs and FM radio, traveled the world several times over.
So-Do burned bright for a couple years and then in classic punk form, burnt-out.
Funky, playful and dubby, So-Do reps a well produced, finely orchestrated version of protest music tha tis funky as hell one moment and then contempaltive, dancey and droney the next. Hopefully this telling snippet about a band, again, 5.810 miles from the states, will put them on a global timeline, they deserve.
Pre-order and keep alerted here.
DE LA SOUL, CLEAR LAKE AUDIOTORIUM EP
Hip-hop dignitaries De La Soul will release what was once just a fan’s pipe dream of a get. Beatles fans have their Beatles, Yesterday and Today white whale, and now fans of “The Plugs” have their rarity coming into the populace (possibly) on March 7. A couple of weeks ago the Long Island group took to Instagram to announce the release of Clear Lake Auditorium, a six-track EP originally distributed as a promo release to DJs back in 1994.
Available to stream, limited edition CD, and vinyl for the first time. Not to be a downer, but it has already sold out. Yep. Gone in less than two days. But since it’s around, maybe you can sniff it out, someplace. Worth a shot, right?
“Originally pressed in 1994 as an exclusive promotional release for select DJs, Clear Lake Audiotorium has achieved near-mythical status among collectors,” the group wrote in a caption. The album includes four tracks from the Buhloone Mindstate era, with two rare collaborations: “sh.Fe.Mc’s” featuring A Tribe Called Quest and “Stix & Stonz” with contributions from Tito of The Fearless Four, Grandmaster Caz, LA Sunshine of the Treacherous Three and Prince Whipper Whip.”
Stay tuned here.
