Search - Otomo Yoshihide :: New Jazz Quintet Live

Otomo at his best...

Artur Nowak | 11/29/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is THE music. It's powerfull, straight, dark, emotional, real. And it's jazz, as you may expect from the band's name, but you may not expect if you know Otomo. He is an individual, you can not expect anything from him, because he will do what he wants anyway. "Flutter" released by Tzadik earlier was a provocative album, it was jazz, but Otomo add sine waves, which can make you sick after a while. Or extatic. For me, it didn't fit too much. It was OK, but for me the link between very energetic jazz (Eric Dolphy would be the closest source of inspiration) didn't correspond with the sine waves, which are kind of non-human music. It was intense, OK, but the jazz-thing and the sine wayes were not interacting too much. On this album Otomo plays guitar and the sine waves age gone and what you get is great jazz, which goes back to the sixties, when it was still alive, when it was a language, not just a style. Great album, maybe one of the best jazz albums of the year, only if jazz fans would discover it, because Otomo is not recognized among jazz fans at all. Yet."