Pressed on vinyl for the first time, this 1971 live session is a complex masterpiece that sadly lay dormant on master tapes for 50 years before finally being released by WeWantSounds. The complexity begins straight away with the name Yamash’ta & The Horizon, which promises a sunrise over the western seas. Girl scouts and astrologers alike cringe at the idea. But just as the sun always rises in the east, the story of this record originates from a time of musical revolutions. the intuitive composer and percussionist Stomu Yamash’ta, who was once lauded by John Cage and Morton Feldman as »the best in his trade«, finds a congenial partner here in Masahiko Satoh. Satoh, who is best known from the psychedelic soundtrack to »Belladonna«, and Yamash’ta are both children of a time when the world was turned upside down, driven by (r)evolutions in jazz, electronic music and Woodstock’s hippiedom. This anarchistic chaos accompanies the free improvisation »Sunrise From West Sea« from the first to the last – 35th – minute. It scratches and crunches; then it whirls up again; in between vocoder-like singing, or whatever you want to call it. One clearly notices the influence of free jazz, but also of the new forms of composition by Cage, Stockhausen and Toru Taremitsu – the great Japanese composer of the 20th century. It’s a happening, an experiment, a journey to the centre of music and its possibilities.
Apifera
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Stones Throw