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Kaze: Atody Man

By Dan McClenaghan
January 27, 2018
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What was it drummer

Art Blakey

drums
1919 - 1990

" data-original-title="" title="">Art Blakey said about surviving in the tough, competitive business of being a jazz musician? Something along the lines of: "You're either busy appearing or you're busy disappearing." There might be something to this. Artists who release a recording every three or four years, or who tour sporadically, face the possibility of fading off and disappearing.

Japanese pianist

Satoko Fujii

piano
b.1958

" data-original-title="" title="">Satoko Fujii is definitely appearing. She has tagged the year 2018—when she turns sixty years of age—as a time span in which she should release twelve albums, one per month. Who does that? Not even in the 1950s, early 1960s heyday at Blue Note Records did an artist put out a dozen albums in a year.

Let the celebration of the big Six-O roll.

Fujii began the year with Satoko Fujii Solo (Libra Records, 2018), the finest of her handful of solo recordings and a standout disc in a huge discography. If you have to pick essential Satoko Fujji recordings out of the crowd, it's one of them. Now, her second release in the twelve albums a year quest appears: Atody Man by her quartet Kaze.

Fujii's sound is unique, in any effort she puts forth; Kaze's is characteristically distinctive. The quartet features two trumpeters—

Natsuki Tamura

trumpet
b.1951

" data-original-title="" title="">Natsuki Tamura and

Christian Pruvost

trumpet

" data-original-title="" title="">Christian Pruvost—who combine a curious mix of blaring brashness with a quirky, sometimes whimsical feel for pure sound/noise; a rolling thunder drummer—

Peter Orins

drums

" data-original-title="" title="">Peter Orins—who mixes muscularity and oddball rhythmic finesse; and strikingly daring pianist who shifts from explosive percussive interludes to moments of beautiful pensive delicacy and melodic fluidity, sometimes several times within one labyrinthine composition.

The music flows from the somber to the bombastic, from chaotic to to melodic, from majestic to intensively pensive. A wild and wondrous ride, as it always is with Fujii. The most focused and accessible of her five Kaze sets.

Learn more about our star rating system

Track Listing

Hypnotique Sympathie; Moving; Meta-Blizzard; Morning Glow; Inspiration 2; Atody Man.

Personnel

Satoko Fujii

piano

Satoko Fujii: piano; Natsuki Tamura: trumpet; Peter Orins: percussion; Christian Pruvost: trumpet.

Album information

Title: Atody Man | Year Released: 2018 | Record Label: Libra Records

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