if you're into Miles Davis' early electric atmospheres, Air's eponym lp will probably make your day. recorded at Epicurius Studio, Tokyo on april 12 & 20, 1977 - yeah, that's exactly 30 years ago - by a bunch of laid-back xperimental jazz cats, namely Yasuo Shimura on saxes, flute, shô, ARP, voice, percusssion and radio - Reinkichi Hayasahi on Fender stratocaster, blue box, crybaby and super gas - Nobuyoshi Ino on electric & acoustic bass, turkish guitar, perc, tape recorder - Hiroshi Muramaki on Yamaha drums, cowbell and perc - Yuji Imamura on conga drums, tabla, the album sounds as fresh and exciting as it probably was, in deep and introspective ways.
strangely, very little online data is available on this gem or its protagonists but always a reliable source on such UFO's , the Kozmigroove connection provided this brief but accurate resume and description:
"Not to be confused with the Henry Threadgill project, nor the Googie Coppola joint (who dropped exactly one album on Herbie Mann's Embryo subsidiary before disappearing), nor the more recent sleazy-listening duo from France. This Japanese quintet of Yasuo Shimura, Renkichi Hayashi, Nobuyoshi Ino, Hiroshi Murakami, and Yuji Imamura continued to preach the gospel of Get Up With It, years after even Miles himself lost the faith. Yessir, this is elevated music, pure in spirit and intention and absolutely mindblowing in effect. Air's sole (eponymous) album is two sidelong cuts of psychedelic electric jazz, testified by five heads who mix Eastern and Western instrumentation into a thick brew of prime Kozmigroov: ringmodulated guitar lines, windchime swirls, ARP dissonance, deep bass echoes, wood flute invocations, processed saxophone, tape effects, subtly assertive grooves, omnipresent layers of percussion... mercy! The brazen shuffle which seizes the last quarter of the record actually reaches the same jazz/rock peak intensity of Jack Johnson's "Right Off." Three Blind Mice are an audiophile label who've reissued an armful of their back-catalog titles on compact disc. Although this album still awaits aluminum rebirth as of May 1999, Takeshi "Tee" Fujii (TBM prez) has promised an XRCD version."
ripped at 320 kbps, hope you'll enjoy and testify
part one
part two
