Sony Music Japan have announced today that four of Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's most popular titles for Three Blind Mice are now available on streaming services.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, with wider availability across different artists! Thinking Isao Suzuki should be next...

Misty: Spotify / Tidal / Apple Music

Midnight Sugar: Spotify / Tidal / Apple Music

Girl Talk: Spotify / Tidal / Apple Music

Midnight Sun: Spotify / Tidal / Apple Music

Michael Naura - Vanessa

What a beautiful album this is - atmospheric, sometimes funky, sometimes foreboding. Klaus Thunemann's bassoon is a unique element in the mix, I love it's inclusion on Baboon, the very start of the track sounding like a proto-Gorillaz S/T jam.

The opener of Side 1- Salvatore - is a fiery, blinding charge which dominates the first half of the record; track 2 - Hills - ups the tempo for a brief interlude before things go bonkers on the aforementioned Baboon ⭐.

Side 2 is a more meditative affair to start with, Vanessa slowly and prettily morphs from a CTI style beat to a vibes led piece, into the beginning of Listen To Me which extends into a funky jam.

The last track - Black Pigeon ⭐ - really pushes Thunemann's bassoon to the forefront and ends the LP menacingly, introspectively and with a good bit of groove.

This is one of my favourite ECM albums - remaining cautiously optimistic it could be reissued on Luminessense at some point...

Michael Naura - Piano ; Wolfgang Schlüter - Vibes, Marimba, Percussion ; Eberhard Weber - Bass ; Joe Nay - Drums ; Klaus Thunemann - Bassoon

J.R. Monterose + The Joe Abodeely Trio – In Action

This is not an original - if you have an original, lucky you. 250-300 copies of this smoker were originally pressed and sold in the cloakroom of Abodeely's Cedar Rapids, Iowa club - "The Tender Trap".

Monterose made a conscious choice to move away from the city before this LP - seeking quieter towns to avoid great expectations and bigger names. In doing so, he achieved more creative liberty at the cost of a larger career.

As for how this reissue was granted, I'll quote the label head:

"Peter Jacobson and Jeff Barr started VSOP in 1980 in Washington DC, where Barr was a jazz disc jockey and record seller, and Jacobson was on the staff of the Smithsonian as a legal consultant. The deal to acquire the license to reissue J. R. Monterose, on the Studio 4 label, was reached after contacting Jimmy Sota, the original producer of the LP. Jimmy was coming off a run of semi-successful low-budget spaghetti westerns in Italian with subtitles, and was glad to let us have the deal…we paid $1750.00 to get the rights and the tape, and, oh by the way, two boxes of unused originals…which in 1980 went for $400-900, up to $1,200 or $1,500. So the record was in the black."

...

Woody Shaw - Lotus Flower

This is an original! Still sealed - cracked this open like a split head. What a *session.*

I prefer this to the dates of the same time on Columbia - the recording is much more natural. Side A is made of originals by the supporting band, Side B is two of Woody's numbers.

Not sure why it's cheaper than the rest of his stuff, it's just as good.

King's Roar - Original

Best track: Jingisukan (We're sort of lucky here because this is the only track online...)

There is no CD - there's this new reissue, and the 1969 pressing. I wanted to know how it sounded before I spent any money... so I asked Mike Peden, who is part of the J-Jazz Squad at BBE.

"I have an Original OG album and it's not free jazz. Jingisukan is definitely the best track on it but the rest of it is very listenable fairly progressive small big band with vibes ... Personally I think it's a great LP and for ¥5500 you really can't go wrong plus you get a lovely repro Obi which I certainly couldn't afford 😉"

Better than I can describe it. However - if you have access to the full album, I'm sure you'd agree with me that it's a little more Free-Jazzy than he's letting on!

A lovely sounding remaster, there's definitely been access to the original sources here. Always like to see a lost record come back to light.

Black Renaissance - Body, Mind and Spirit

Side A - Black Renaissance / Side B - Magic Ritual

For fans of Jazz Dispensary releases - better than some of their actual output...

Harry Whitaker sent the tapes for this album to Baystate in Japan. They stole them, pressed it twice, and Harry was never able to recover his masters. Especially bad as the only tape located in the US was burned to ash in a house fire.

Luv 'N Haight approached Harry years later to officially release this joint in the West - providing copies to included musicians like Buster Williams who had never heard it prior to the reissue! Efforts to get this done seem extensive with lots of credits given for the help. (Tony Higgins who is involved as part of the J-Jazz series @ BBE gets a mention!)

Woody Shaw slaughters this record - multiple extended trumpet solos that compete with his very best.

If you have an original, you're probably missing 2 kidneys or your left nut. Seems like this is a $1k album.

I put off buying this for ages because I was concerned it wouldn't sound all that good. It's not an audiophile album at all - but the soundstage is wide and the album just smokes.

Highly recommended.

The Album! / Promo pics and lovely images.

If you like J-Jazz, you might like K-Jazz. These labels mean largely nout, but isn't it fun to be alphabet buddies?

This is Kim Sung-Bae's Pepper Man.

Sides A and B are conceptual - inspired by the journeys of Middle Eastern spice traders on their travels to Italy. This is likely the strongest section of the album, but the whole thing is pretty fantastic - there's even a cheeky cover of Coltrane's Resolution.

If I had to recommend just one track - Midnight Sunlight!

This is the first issue of this album on vinyl, originally it was released on Kim's own label Ilil Sound over in Korea back in 2013 (this doesn't appear to be on Discogs). This new issue is on the South Korean label Beatball.

The packaging on this thing is beautiful. It's worth looking at the promo images because I can't really do justice myself on a phone. Mastering is great too, only complaint is all that good effort just to press it at GZ!

Worth your time. It'll have to be on Bandcamp as it isn't on streaming yet.

A real Toh tapper.

This *has* had a reissue, I've been lucky enough to find an original. What an album! I believe we have the first appearance of FI's signature track 'Good-Bye' here which many will know from Takeo Moriyama's Smile, and FI's other incredible album - Watarase.

The other tracks, 'Toh' and 'Alligator Dance', really display how explosive a force Fumio Itabashi is behind the keys.

Highly recommended.

One of the titles on Epic's Stereorama label (though this is a '70s JP reissue) - what a stellar recording!

An incredibly intimate set recorded live with an invited audience, the band are smooth as butter on this one with just the right amount of grit (salt?)

Dave's polite introduction for each number and the band always makes me smile too.

guys they encased the OG Tone Poet Frank Gambale LP of 'In The Wee Small Hours' for real OG collectors!!!! now it will stay perfect forever!!! /s

...

Seeing a bunch of Instagram vinyl "influencers" getting these the last few weeks; saw a Pharoah Sanders one too for Love Is Here.

A fool and their money...

Sitting here pondering the logistics of shipping out bottles of Nongfu Spring Water to each major tournament... how many bottles do we reckon WST get for the big events? Can't be cheap to ship!

Anybody tasted the clear stuff? Have you ever even seen it in the UK besides the Snooker?

Feeling like these are being introduced to justify the steadily rising prices of Blue Note Classic series titles. Anyone seen this yet?

I wonder who'll be cutting...

Here's hoping this gets a decent run in the US because I'm really enjoying this over here in Scotland (FOREVER!)

Looks to be available in Japan as well. What's happened with the rights/licensing here?

A beautifully played date - a shame to think only one of the players is still with us today. (John Webber on bass, sorry about the sticker...)

Worth a stream even if you can't find the record.