I'd always been a fan of Sleepwalker, for me they always stood head and shoulders above the meleé of nu-jazz pretenders, they were a proper band with a unique chemistry, and with Hajime Yoshizawa they had a supreme talent, a gifted pianist and a great composer. In fact as the sole source of material, and musical director in many ways Sleepwalker was Hajime Yoshizawa. Of course I'm biased, they were managed and produced by my friend Shuya Okino and I'd known Hajime and larger than life sax player Masa since their days in Mondo Grosso, and my first dj trips to Japan. However when Sleepwalker dropped their first release the monstrous Ai-No-Kawa, I was genuinely blown away, even more so by their incendiary live performance and the reaction they were getting from young Japanese clubbers. I was lucky enough to have seen Sleepwalker play a number of times, and they never ceased to enthral me, it was just a special balance, Hajime's tunes and passionate piano, Masa's gutsy spiritual saxophone, Nobu's fluid groove behind the kit, so good in fact they had no problem in persuading the legendary Pharoah Sanders to record with them, on a tune that would prove to be their swansong, "The Journey". So when Shuya mentioned the idea of me producing their next album, I naturally relished the the proposal, but I should have known it was a little too good to be true, indeed why would Shuya want to pass on such a great job? Well, all was not sweetness and light inside the Sleepwalker camp, the inevtable fights and wrangles, Hajime and Nobu have deep history that goes back to their early days paying dues and cutting their teeth as jazz musicians in New York, and Hajime and Masa's relationship always had the potential for serious ructions! So Sleepwalker had become too hot to handle for Shuya, and then Sleepwalker were no more.
So the plot changes, and I miss out on my dream gig and the chance to work with Hajime, but in the wake of Sleepwalker's demise Shuya procures a solo deal for Masa, and with their relationship being somewhat strained he asks me to produce. Now, Masa is a maverick, a hard drinking, sax toting rebel whose personality runs thoroughly against the grain in Japan; yet despite his idiosyncrasies and drunken antics, he has presence and charisma, and when he digs deep, the resonance of a life lived on the edge is expressed in playing that is powerful and transcendent. Masa is for real. So it's a big challenge for me, even more so considering the concept for the album that Shuya has concocted. For his debut as a leader Masa will record versions of tunes suggested by various djs and musical luminaries, so Gilles Peterson, Jurgen from Jazzanova, and the one and only Demus have all come up with tunes along with Shuya , his brother and KJM partner Yoshi, and myself.
So let's begin with the tunes. Jazz artists have always borrowed repertoire from their peers and the past, and it's not uncommon for a band leader to not be a composer, but the notion of djs choosing the material is a cute twist on how to make a jazz album. For the producer it has potential to both delight and upset, other peoples selections might be total inspiration or pure desperation. So what did I get? Gilles Peterson came up with Yusef Lateef's "Before Dawn", which I love, but isn't it more of a mood than a tune, and is everybody going to suggest tunes by other sax players? But it's a good choice and a good vehicle for the mellower side of Masa's playing. Jurgen gives us Paulo Moura's "Nem Precisou Mais Um Sol" which immediately takes me back to the dancers sessions at Dingwalls, it's a full blooded, high tempo, latin fusion piece with an amazing horn line that reminds me of a spaghetti western! Demus (from Two Banks Of Four and producer/engineer of tremendous pedigree) proposes Julius Hemphill's "The Hard Blues" which I'm not familiar with but turns out to be a free-ish blues in 6/8, or an amazing saxophone quartet work-out depending on which version you check. (Funnily enough whilst I was working on the album in Tokyo I went to see the Brand New Heavies, backstage after the show I was talking to Finn Peters who was in the horn section and it transpires that he turned Demus on to "The Hard Blues" whilst they were working on Finn's beautiful "Butterflies" album, thanks Finn!) . Yoshi's selection is the title track from an eminently collectable, independently released album by Jothan Collins "Winds Of Change", it's a 6/8 vibe but a little crazy, but there again so is Masa, whilst his brother comes up with the totally appropriate but nonetheless daunting prospect of recording a version of Albert Ayler's monumental "Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe", thanks Shuya! I decide to choose Lesette Wilson's "Look Into Tomorrow" for the simple reasons that at least it's not by a sax player, and I want there to be a couple of vocal tunes on the record. For the final selection we cheat a bit, and agree the brothers should have another choice collectively as KJM, so I decide we'll do Shamek Farrah's "Waiting For Marvin"!!
The next hurdle was deciding on the line-up, Masa had already expressed his desire to continue working with Nobu and Kyoshi on drums and bass so there will be some continuity with Sleepwalker. The next crucial choice was pianist, however it was a bit of a no-brainer, Shota Hishiyama had already deputised for Hajime on Sleepwalker dates, and was a player I'd heard and admired both with Sleepwalker and in the KJM live band. Even better his Stateside jazz schooling meant he spoke great English which was essential for me unless the whole process was going to be conducted in tortuous pidgen English and my extremely scant Japanese. So we started rehearsing (in The Room Shuya's pocket-sized club in the heart of Shibuya) with this quartet at the tail end of last year. The first rehearsal I remember as being encouraging but I was plagued with the feeling that it all sounded a bit like Sleepwalker but with something obviously missing, ie. Hajime. Some of the tunes were fairly straightforward and whilst I was keen to put some original twists into the arrangements I didn't want to stray too far from the source. So "Waiting For Marvin" and "Nem Precisou Mais Um Sol" fell into this category, "Look Into Tomorrow" I'd imagined from the start as being a jazz-bossa treatment of the slow boogie/ jazz-funk of the original; "The Hard Blues","Before Dawn" and "Winds Of Change" all posed greater problems, and "Music Is The Healing Force Of the Universe" I didn't even want to think about!
Before I go any further I'd like to point out that any challenges the project presented were thoroughly relished by myself, being stuck in a room (The Room!) with some fine jazz players with a remit to make music is my idea of heaven. I felt lucky and privileged to have the opportunity to work on the album and even though there were some tricky issues to negotiate I was hardly stuck for ideas.
After a couple of rehearsals it became obvious that what was needed was to augment the quartet with at least one more horn, along with percussion which would take the sound away from the inevitable Sleepwalker comparisons. Without having to look beyond the coterie of musicians that orbit around Shuya's scene in Tokyo, I was able to recruit Takao Hirose on trombone, who's demos with his own band had been impressive as had been his enthusiasm on the dance-floor whenever I played at The Room. Finally to complete the sextet percussionist Hiderow is not only one of the best in Japan he also plays some fine trumpet. From the first rehearsal with the extended line-up it all started to make sense, in fact it started to sound really exciting.
So with all the pieces in place it was time to make sense of the arrangements, and with invaluable assistance from Shota and his interpreting skills we started to nail the material. Leaving aside the two vocal tunes we aimed at rehearsing the other five to a sufficient standard in order to record them in a single session at Studio Dedé in Tokyo. Our version of "Nem Precisou Mais Um Sol" sticks fairly closely to Paulo Moura's original apart from the the last part of "the head" which we shifted until after the first solo to act as a bridge and we inserted a percussion break for a bit jazz-dance fizz. Similarly "Waiting For Marvin" is built around it's joyful horn lines and bright chord changes, and with the potential to voice sax, bone and trumpet there was no point in messing around with it too much, though the groove on our version leans more towards a samba swing. However I was conscious of Masa's passion for "free" jazz, and saw that with "Waiting For Marvin" I could create some space for him to blow without harmonic constraint, so our version begins with a conga/ sax dialogue which resolves into a big spread chord crashing down from which the theme emerges, Masa's solo rolls out with piano and bass dropping out leaving him to free up over just the drums before reprising the intro's sax/conga thing. With "The Hard Blues" my basic idea was to take the tune in a kind of Afro 6/8 direction, and the theme really started to make sense in that way with Hidero's Chekere laying the foundation, we also took the liberty of adding a little more harmonic structure behind the trombone solo, before the whole things breaks into a 4/4 afro-beat(ish) work-out behind Masa's tenor (thanks Shota for that nugget of inspiration) returning to 6/8 for the head/outro. As I mentioned Yusef Lateef's "Before Dawn" is big on mood and atmosphere and whilst there is a theme, like "The Hard Blues" there's no chord changes or harmonic structure to work with. After trying a few different vibes rhythmically we eventually settled on taking the piece deeper, slower and even moodier, Hirose came up with some great trombone textures and Shota was very much in hi element with the Rhodes adding colour and but staying spacey. Having established the order of solos there was no need to over-rehearse a piece that was best left open ended, as every performance seemed to yield a it's own special magic. Jothan Collins "Winds Of Change" is a fairly aggressive sounding tune in 6/8 with a heavy militant feel, however I wanted there to be a prettier, more rolling waltz-time tune on the album which was never going to be wrought from the Collins tune. All the players thought I was mad and were fairly baffled when I tried explain that I wanted to insert part of Oliver Nelson's "Patterns" into "Winds Of Change", much to everyone's surprise, my own included, the ploy really came off, and a new tune was born of the two that had all the elements needed to create the kind of 6/8 swing and harmonic lushness I was looking for. So, five tunes which came together in rehearsal and we recorded in one fairly manic, but enjoyable day at Studio Dedé, a great space with a suitable collection of analogue gear, vintage mics etc.
So having recorded these five tunes back in February there was a long hiatus before getting round to the two vocal tunes, eventually these came together over a few crazy days at the beginning of July, after a period when it seemed like it was never going to happen. The story behind the vocal tracks goes way back to conversations I had with Shuya at the beginning, and it was always my opinion that if we were going to do a version of "Music is The Healing Force of the Universe" then it would have to be sung by Bembé Segué, apart from the fact that she'd previously worked with Sleepwalker, there really was no other singer I could imagine taking it on. As for "Look Into Tomorrow", well that was fairly straightforward and though Bembé wasn't necessarily the obvious choice for the tune I thought she'd probably make a great job of that too, and of course it made sense to feature just one guest vocalist. So back in February when we were working on the other tracks I e-mailed Bembé to see if she would be interested, and the reply came back with an emphatic yes, so it became part of the plan to bring her over to Tokyo to record. This plan seemed to work on many levels, Bembé was thrilled with the idea of returning to Tokyo to see old friends, and as far as "Music is..." was concerned it meant that I could wait for us all to be in a rehearsal situation with the added inspirational factor of her musical strength, and somehow our interpretation would emerge organically.(If you get the impression that I was shying away from how to deal with Ayler's epic tune then you'd be completely right!!) However, this plan turned out to be a non-starter, on my return to London in May/June, Bembé proved to be unusually elusive and when I did reach her it turned out that events in her personal life were conspiring against the possibility of her being able to come to Tokyo. To cut a long story short, I had to resort to plan B and find a way to record her vocals in London before returning to Tokyo to finish the tracks with the band, as the studio and rehearsals were already booked, and as is normally the case these days with musicians who have to hustle like crazy for work, it's difficult to get everyone together in the same place at the same time. So with time running preciously short, I eventually managed to organise a session the day before I was due to fly back to Tokyo, and it seemed quite a tall order to be able to prepare two backing tracks for Bembé to sing to and record her in the space of a single session. Still the question of how to deal with "Music is..." remained unsolved though of course over the intervening months some kind of notion of how to approach it had formed in my mind, I knew it wouldn't be as "free" as the original and I wanted the music to have more of a healing vibe in complete contrast to the storming tumult of Ayler's original. But how was I going to create an adequate backing track along those lines? I needed to create a template for the band to work with and something that would give Bembé sufficient inspiration to sing to; step up Mike Patto. The ex Reel People songwriter/main-man has been a close friend and associate in recent years as I've been lending him a hand, (but mainly my ears) as he pieces together the epic of Vanessa Freeman's album. Though it was a somewhat knackered Patto that stepped into the studio that day, he very quickly was able to lay down piano, bass and midi horns that captured the very essence of what I was hoping for, something modal, Trane-ish and epic that worked around the simple pulsing groove we'd laid down earlier, perfect. As far as "Look Into Tomorrow" was concerned, was it really possible that Bembé could record her vocals to a ropey rehearsal version I'd recorded on my i-phone? Well with a bit of editing the answer was yes. When Bembé arrived at the studio that evening, having already done a full day's work in her day-job, she quickly despatched "Look Into Tomorrow" with consummate and professional ease, (though she confessed to me later she'd been nervous about doing the tune), and then we sat down to run through "Music Is.." before recording. As soon as she heard Mike's backing track she was excited, and as she sat next to me on the studio sofa and started to sing all I could do was hold my head (to stop it exploding!), after a few lines I stopped her and said we should record. The resulting twelve minutes in the vocal booth were as awe inspiring and magical as any I've experienced in music, there was Bembé, eyes closed, a woman in her element, singing a lyric she may well have been born to sing.
So I was able to return to Tokyo and finish the record. Suffice to say we had alot of fun recording those two tunes with Bembé's voice despite the inhibitions of having to work with a click, with Shota letting loose on the studio's Steinway and Masa delivering some of his best playing. Having now mixed the album in London the Masa project (M.A.S.A) is ready to roll and all I can say is a massive thank you to everyone involved for making it such an enjoyable and exciting journey.
Peace.
