Nankai TRIO: Antarctica (2025)

Hope everyone out there is having a good holiday if you celebrate, or just a good day if you don’t. On the music front, I received some lovely gifts from family, including a few killer records and the complete recording of Henry Cow I’ll eventually get to. Nothing from 2025, though (are you surprised?) so as I kick back post-Christmas with a cup of coffee, let’s talk jazz fusion. Since seeing the sublime ridiculousness of the cover art, I’ve been hooked on Nankai Trio and their debut Antarctica. The Japanese trio take the technical virtuosity of classic fusion groups like Return to Forever and inject some modern shred into their songs, and the result is one of the most enjoyable, exciting albums I’ve heard this year.

ChrisDecember 26, 2025December 29, 2025Leave a comment

Hiromi: Out There (2025)

Similar to my last review, the where’s and how’s of my discovering the indelible virtuosity of jazz pianist Hiromi are lost to the fog of age (and probably weed, who are we kidding?). Maybe it was during my heady exploration of the fusion and jazz rock coming out of Japan in the ’70s, but however the path was laid, I’m so glad it led me to Out There, her latest album and collaboration with her full band unit Sonicwonder. It’s a heady mix of styles, exuberant and joyful and packing so much excellence in the performance aspect once I put it on, it’s hard not to let it replay over and over again.

ChrisDecember 2, 2025Leave a comment

kiyoshi sugimoto's babylonia wind album cover

Vinyl

Kiyoshi Sugimoto: Babylonia Wind (1972)

Would you look at that? Japanese jazz that’s NOT on Three Blind Mice or East West Records. Earlier this year saw the vinyl release of Babylonia Wind, the 1972 record from guitarist Kiyoshi Sugimoto and his quintet. Beautifully packaged as part of the Deep Jazz Reality series from Universounds, the Tokyo record shop and reissue label run by Yusuke Ogawa, it’s another hidden gem in the early 70s jazz rock revolution. I don’t know if I’m equipped to compare how this fares with a lot of what was on the rise at the time: this isn’t Miles Davis levels of fusion and jazz rock, but Sugimoto’s guitar is definitely wailing with a rock god fervor over the course of the album’s five tracks.

ChrisNovember 26, 2025Leave a comment

Miles Davis: Agharta (1975)

Where does a listener start when it comes to the “electric period” of Miles Davis? Where does the “electric period” even begin? Miles and the second quintet were using electric instruments as far back as Miles In The Sky (a personal favorite) but it seems like most folks peg it at the ambient, rolling atmosphere of In A Silent Way (another favorite). Where listeners start, though, is another matter. For me it was unfortunately with Pangaea, a live set from Japan that at age 17 I was not prepared for. Had I only started with that same date’s afternoon set, the brilliantly funky Agharta, I might have more quickly embraced this side of Davis’s career instead of retreating back to the early 60s for much of my 20s and 30s.

ChrisOctober 29, 2025October 29, 2025Leave a comment

Norman Connors: Dance of Magic (1972)

I wasn’t planning on this being a jazz-heavy week, but after listening to the fantastic Les McCann album, I turned to see what other unlistened CDs and records I had lying around and recalled the 2-for-1 disc featuring the first two albums of drummer Norman Connors as a bandleader. Although he’d be more known for his smooth R&B soul jazz in a few years with hits like “Betcha By Golly Wow” and “You Are My Starship”, Dance of Magic shows the man in hardcore jazz mode with a killer lineup helping to bring his vision to life. Also like McCann, it features one massive side-long track followed by a few shorter numbers, but the improvisation and genre mixing goes in both a smoother and more avant-garde direction.

ChrisAugust 19, 2025August 19, 2025Leave a comment

Les McCann: Invitation to Openness (1972)

I didn’t know who Les McCann was, or what kosmigroov was as a genre, but somehow (I assume from Sea of Tranquility) I picked up a copy of McCann’s Invitation to Openness and haven’t looked back. Or forward, really: I’ve pretty much just stayed with this album, but if this is indicative of what the keyboardist/ composer does on his other albums and I’ll need to rectify that soon. Both meditative and funky, psychedelic and jazzy, it’s a gorgeous record that can match me when I need to send into the clouds or come down from the ledge.

ChrisAugust 18, 20251 Comment

Consuming the Tangible

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Tag: jazz