Stomu Yamashta and Masahiko Satoh - Metempsychosis (album)

"Although billed by Columbia's marketing team as Masahiko Satoh's latest 'Composition for Percussion & Jazz Orchestra', this monumental sonic slab, played by New Herd Orchestra and conducted by leader Toshiyuki Miyami, sounds more like a bizarre hybrid of T. Dream's ELECTRONIC MEDITATION and John Coltrane's ASCENSION. Split into two single tracks, the music drifts in over several minutes under a foggy blanket of low-grade funereal brass, a cold clammy cosmic conductor's hand of doom controlling the atmosphere, the huge brass section anonymously aping Edgar Froese's Mellotron 400 brass samples, before bursting forth suddenly with the shamanic paroxysms of Yamashita's percussion and cloudbursts of spectacular atonal brass and wind sections. Indeed, the line-up of New Herd musicians here is in itself so monumental that it creates a unique Middle European sound, like the movie soundtrack from some imaginary Hungarian Creation Myth. The music then slowly fades out like some death ship passing in the stillness of night. Suddenly, every instrument tears into life with peals of wanton sax sections, urban blues trumpets, and Yamashita's berserk percussive freak-outs. Besides the standard drums, piano, bass and guitar, a brass section of four trumpets, four trombones, four saxophones and a bassoon tear the soul apart with their vicious combinations of meditative low-church drones and uplifting Zoroastrian fire lights. At times, the music becomes a drums-and-percussion tantrum between Yamashita and drummer Isao Yomoda, the percussionist's close-miked and high-tuned drums boggling the senses as the seething and sibilant rush of cymbals leaves the brain feeling like a tiny ship caught in the eye of a hurricane." - Julian Cope

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artist: Stomu Yamashta & Masahiko Satoh
title: Metempsychosis
type: album
label: Nippon Columbia
release date: 1971
length: 36:00
genre: free jazz/experimental
country: Japan
format: mp3
bitrate: vbr (241-244kbps avg)
codec: lame 3.97

credits:
Composed by Masahiko Satoh

Masahiko Satoh - piano
Stomu Yamashta - percussion

Toshiyuki Miyama & The New Herd orchestra:
Toshiyuki Miyama - band leader
Masaaki Ito - electric bass
Isao Yomoda - drums
Isao Kimura, Kazumi Oguro - alto saxophone
Shigeru Hirano - baritone saxophone
Mamoru Mori, Seiji Inoue - tenor saxophone
Masamichi Uetaka, Takahide Uchida, Takashi Hayakawa, Teruhiko Kataoka - trombone
Shin Kazuhara, Kazumi Takeda, Shuji Atsuta, Yoshikazu Kishi - trumpet

tracklist:
1. Metempsychosis I
2. Metempsychosis II