Masayuki Takayanagi "Three Improvised Variations on a Theme of Qadhafi (1990)

Description: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Here we have an astonishing CD that must stand as one of the truly definitive recordings of experimental guitar music, courtesy of the one and only MASAYUKI TAKAYANAGI: Three Improvised Variations on a Theme of Qadhafi, a long-unavailable Japanese import released in 1990 by the Jinya label. Takayanagi, who died at the age of 58 in 1991, was a guitarist known by few, even in his homeland... a shame indeed, as he was utterly unique. Otomo Yoshihide (perhaps the most important presence in contemporary Japanese experimental music) cites Takayanagi as his most crucial influence as a musician... and no less an axemaster than Henry Kaiser has sung Takayanagi’s praises for years, declaring him to be “the Sonny Sharrock/Derek Bailey/Blood Ulmer/Fred Frith of Japan” – and if you own recordings by more than two of those gentlemen, then this is a CD you should become intimate with at the earliest opportunity. After years of playing in a “cool” jazz style in the vein of Wes Montgomery, Takayanagi began to pursue a different direction in which he jettisoned structure to become Japan’s elder statesman of free-jazz guitar. Then he took his music one step further to explore a style of pure improvisation that bore no relationship to jazz whatsoever... and that is where Three Improvised Variations comes in. On this disc (Takayanagi’s final release, issued six months before his death), he performs solo, utilizing a “tabletop” guitar technique similar to that employed by AMM’s Keith Rowe, and on occasion by Fred Frith and Jim O’Rourke. Here Takayanagi uses this approach to churn up huge, grainy clouds of bellow and drone... or add sounds atop sounds to create a seething morass of aural activity. These soundscapes shift from ominous hums to howling monsoons of noise, enveloping your head in a gauzy turban of dark ambience that you’ll want to wear forever. No strumming, no plucking, no notes, no chords – in fact, not much that even sounds like the guitar as we know it. Hard to figure how in hell Takayanagi could summon up such an enormous wall of sound by his lonesome, but summon it he does... and the result stands as a shining example of experimental audio at its most provocative. As Jim O'Rourke puts it in his excellent liner notes: "...he's creating a dense constellation of moving bodies, expanding gases, and exploding stars. These sounds do not seem to come from one place, bursting forth from a single cardboard amp speaker, instead they seem to come from above, below and all around, both inside and outside our heads." Three Improvised Variations on a Theme of Qadhafi has been out of print for more than twenty years... and honestly, wasn’t especially easy to find even when it was available. The disc is in beautiful, near-mint shape, and the obi is intact and included. Track listing Variation I Variation II Variation III

Price: 25 USD

Location: Brentwood, California

End Time: 2024-11-25T04:26:20.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5 USD