Stomu Yamashta has had a varied career, beginning with his electronic excursions such as Red Buddha, recording with the supergroup Go, and, most recently, a few releases that are very much in the "space music" category. Sea and Sky, released in 1983, falls into this new category, and is a blend of very ethereal synth music and grandiose, symphonic passages, akin, perhaps, to the sound of artists such as Deuter, Kitaro, and the like, but with sections that sound almost orchestral, comparable to Constance Demby, etc. Stomu Yamashta put together Go in the mid-seventies, and recorded the Go, and the well-received Go Live From Paris. Go Too was their third and final release. For those unfamiliar with the band, it included Al DiMeola, Klaus Schulze, and Michael Shrieve, among others, the result of which was an effective mixture of rock, electronics, fusion and soul! Of the three, this is probably their weakest work, influenced as it was by the disco and soul movement. However, the underlying instrumentation gives evidence of a strong guitar/rhythm section, with Mr. Schulze announcing his presence with an occasional, well-placed "whoosh." Seriously, if you are at all curious to check out this star line-up, this might be worth your while. And, if you do enjoy the jazz/soul-inflected fusion genre, you could do much worse than this.
A percussive tour de force, RED BUDDHA is as unlikely a record to be found on Vanguard (traditionally renowned as a jazz label) as possible. Stomu Yamash'ta was still toying with the synthesizers heard on SEA AND SKY. Here, he's a one-man rhythm machine, using delicate electronic processing and the vocabularies of multi-tracking and musique concrFte to construct two large-scale percussive blow-fests. "Red Buddha" is an astounding feast of hand-swept drums, iron plates, studio-enhanced will-o-the-wisps, arcane noisemakers, and various other devices. This dense tribal stew conjures up the heartbeats of Far Eastern gods. "As Expanding As" begins as a mini-symphony of steel drums arising out of ether and joined by mingling chop blocks that begin to excite the atoms in the surrounding soundfield. The listener is eventually caught up in a maelstrom of objects struck, bent, attacked, hissed, and left adrift in the prickly underbrush of sound. At least ten years ahead of its time on release, RED BUDDHA deserves ...
GET DOWN HERE
....only 2 long tracks of atmospheric beauty and percussive bliss. a film or life score's dream.
8/4/10
Stomu Yamashta - RED BUDDHA '71 (1st LP)
Stomu Yamashta has had a varied career, beginning with his electronic excursions such as Red Buddha, recording with the supergroup Go, and, most recently, a few releases that are very much in the "space music" category. Sea and Sky, released in 1983, falls into this new category, and is a blend of very ethereal synth music and grandiose, symphonic passages, akin, perhaps, to the sound of artists such as Deuter, Kitaro, and the like, but with sections that sound almost orchestral, comparable to Constance Demby, etc. Stomu Yamashta put together Go in the mid-seventies, and recorded the Go, and the well-received Go Live From Paris. Go Too was their third and final release. For those unfamiliar with the band, it included Al DiMeola, Klaus Schulze, and Michael Shrieve, among others, the result of which was an effective mixture of rock, electronics, fusion and soul! Of the three, this is probably their weakest work, influenced as it was by the disco and soul movement. However, the underlying instrumentation gives evidence of a strong guitar/rhythm section, with Mr. Schulze announcing his presence with an occasional, well-placed "whoosh." Seriously, if you are at all curious to check out this star line-up, this might be worth your while. And, if you do enjoy the jazz/soul-inflected fusion genre, you could do much worse than this.
A percussive tour de force, RED BUDDHA is as unlikely a record to be found on Vanguard (traditionally renowned as a jazz label) as possible. Stomu Yamash'ta was still toying with the synthesizers heard on SEA AND SKY. Here, he's a one-man rhythm machine, using delicate electronic processing and the vocabularies of multi-tracking and musique concrFte to construct two large-scale percussive blow-fests. "Red Buddha" is an astounding feast of hand-swept drums, iron plates, studio-enhanced will-o-the-wisps, arcane noisemakers, and various other devices. This dense tribal stew conjures up the heartbeats of Far Eastern gods. "As Expanding As" begins as a mini-symphony of steel drums arising out of ether and joined by mingling chop blocks that begin to excite the atoms in the surrounding soundfield. The listener is eventually caught up in a maelstrom of objects struck, bent, attacked, hissed, and left adrift in the prickly underbrush of sound. At least ten years ahead of its time on release, RED BUDDHA deserves ...
GET DOWN HERE
....only 2 long tracks of atmospheric beauty and percussive bliss. a film or life score's dream.
