Angura Sounds Series Vol. 1: Masayuki Takayanagi

For me, no one better exemplifies a life devoted to the dark margins of sound than Takayanagi ‘Jojo’ Masayuki. Although he is certainly a less romantic outsider than notoriously tortured saxophonist Abe Kaoru, Takayanagi was a screaming ghost, always a little outside the frame, but miles ahead of the curve. His fearless exploration of sound, always pushing against boundaries, always changing, put him far outside of the confines of language, in a space occupied only by naked inexplicable sounds.

Takayanagi started his career as a fairly straight-laced bebop guitarist cutting his teeth in American G.I. clubs. His real sonic expedition began in the early Sixties when, along with free spirited bassist Kanai Hideto, he formed the impetuous Jazz Academy, a group devoted to improvisation and experimentation. Certainly not as far-out as Yasunoe Tone and Takehisa Kosugi’s contemporaneous John Cage inspired Group Ongaku, still the few recordings of the Jazz Academy and it’s later incarnation New Century Music Workshop prove the music they were creating had more in common with Sun Ra, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman than anything being produced by other Japanese jazz musicians who were all still stuck on watered down bebop and cool jazz.

Our story however, really begins after the New Century Music Workshop had been banned from almost all jazz clubs in Tokyo and Takayanagi had spent a good length of time in rehab after several drug-related arrests. By the late Sixties this small cabal of jazz misfits had pretty much forged there own new territory of sound, one that had equally to do with heavy free jazz improvisation, avant-garde composition and even the anthropological recordings being released on academic record labels like Ocora, Smithsonian Folkways and Nonesuch. During this period Takayanagii started experimenting with extended techniques on guitar and had incorporated feedback and prepared guitar in his arsenal of sonic weaponry, often placing the guitar on a table, using mallets, metal rulers and other sundry objects to coax otherworldy sounds from his strings.

The first important recording from this period is drummer and fellow New Century Music Workshop member Togashi Masahiko’s We Now Create released in 1969, which features Takayanagi on guitar. The album opens with delicate splashes of feedback and sax which slowly builds into a full throttle noise assault that would make even Sonny Sharrock run for the door. From here the album veers into a beautiful cornpipe melody that sounds like a lost goat herder, being followed by a group of Burundi drummers. The closing piece prominently features Takayanagi on classical guitar, playing in an idiom entirely his own, simultaneously free and precise, counterpointing ferocious glossolalic runs of notes with delicate strums of bucolic chords. With this monumental release Takayanagi and his band of outsiders proved themselves fearless innovators of sound capable of creating peerless symphonies of joy and despair.

Hot on the heels of Togashi’s release Takayanagi recorded his own debut as leader; Independence; Tread on New Ground which was released in early1970. Even more than its predecessor, Independence reveals Takayanagi’s mature style in which texture and silences play in an increasingly important role. His playing on this album is truly phenomenal, constantly evolving and dancing around the other instruments, alternating between masterful melodicism and unfettered ferocity. The last piece on the album, Mass Projection is one of Takayanagi’s enduring improvisational techniques that he pursued for many years, with a number of players. A simple, but rich concept, the idea is to play as loud as you can for as long as you can, and it’s no surprise that this technique yielded incredible results when Takayanagi was sparing with altoist Abe Kaoru, who notoriously practiced alongside Tokyo’s freeways, facing down oncoming traffic in an impossible battle of sheer willpower. For me, this album embodies all the elements that make Japanese free jazz so unique; a total mastery of ma (the zen concept of space and silence), the emphatic use of texture as compositional practice and the existential focus on despair (in opposition to the ecstatic rapture of American free jazz, or the detached intellectualism of the European jazz vanguard).

In the myriad of releases that make up Takayanagi’s modest oeuvre he employs a wide array of styles that range from wall of noise free jazz assaults to pastoral Spanish guitar ballads. I’ve included a small sampling of some of my favourite Takayanagi outings, which highlight the inimitable visions of his sonic personae. As well as the aforementioned albums, I’ve posted Free Form Suite, which includes the incredible Sun in the East, a long devotional journey in which Takayanagi’s flowing Kundalini guitar style sounds like Ostad Elahi recording for Strata East. Another highlight on this album is his deconstruction of the blues idiom on the opening track.  Also Included is Action Direct, a ferocious album of prepared guitar and tapes recorded in the early 80’s, which in terms of unrelenting intensity, was unparalleled at a the time, and even by today’s standards, wherein noise albums regularly get reviewed on Pitchfork, it can make even the most devoted Wolf Eyes fan uncomfortable. You better have sturdy desk to hide under for this one!

-BH

Albums:

We Now Create

http://rapidshare.com/files/148394977/Masahiko_Togashi_Quartet_-_We_Now_Create__1969_.zip

Independence; Tread on New Ground

http://www.mediafire.com/?dbmzmztymkz

 Free Form Suite

http://www.mediafire.com/?r742mbjitoa

Action Direct

http://www.mediafire.com/?enlzcjsxwmg