![\"stomu1.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/stomu1.jpg\")
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If you\u2019ve ever watched The Man Who Fell to Earth<\/em> then you\u2019ve heard music by Japanese percussionist and composer Stomu Yamash\u2019ta. The opening scene where David Bowie\u2019s duffle-coated alien stumbles down a hillside (falling to earth for a second time) is scored with the first few minutes of Poker Dice<\/em><\/a>, the opening track on Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s Floating Music<\/em> album; more Yamash\u2019ta pieces are heard later in the film. Floating Music<\/em> has just been reissued on CD by Cherry Red in Seasons<\/em><\/a>, a box set which contains all seven of the albums Yamash\u2019ta recorded for the Island label from 1972 to 1976, with each disc housed in a facsimile card sleeve.<\/p>\n Stomu Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s artistic profile was very high in the 1970s, high enough to make his apparent disappearance in the decade that followed an unusual thing. Unusual for me, anyway. I only started to notice his name in the early 1980s, mostly in connection with feature films, and couldn\u2019t work out why he was no longer mentioned anywhere as an active artist. In addition to the Roeg soundtrack he plays on the soundtracks for Robert Altman\u2019s Images<\/em> (1972) and Saul Bass\u2019s Phase IV<\/em> (1974); he’s also one of the performers on the Peter Maxwell Davies score for The Devils<\/em> (1971) although Ken Russell\u2019s film gets to be so chaotic I\u2019ve yet to identify his contribution. Later in the decade Yamash\u2019ta was the only non-Western artist to appear in the final episode of Tony Palmer\u2019s television history of pop music All You Need Is Love<\/em>, in a programme that explored new musical directions. Away from films and TV there were numerous concerts; Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s history as a percussion prodigy in the 1960s had seen him performing compositions by Peter Maxwell Davies and Toru Takemitsu when he was still in his teens. His energetic performances gave way to a frenzied recording schedule\u2014in 1971 alone he recorded six studio albums\u2014which culminated in 1976 with the founding of Go, a short-lived jazz-fusion supergroup whose lineup included Steve Winwood, Al Di Meola, Michael Shrieve, and (surprisingly) Klaus Schulze.<\/p>\n Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s “disappearance” in the 1980s was really a retreat from the spotlight after a decade-and-a-half of almost continual public activity. He returned to Japan where he continued recording but gravitated away from jazz and avant-garde music towards the spiritual side of Japanese culture. Most of his albums since 1980 have only been Japan-only releases, another factor contributing to his obscurity elsewhere. More recently he\u2019s taken to playing the Sanukitophone<\/a>, a bespoke percussion instrument made from a variety of volcanic rock unique to the Japanese archipelago.<\/p>\n Freedom Is Frightening (1973), one of three Yamash\u2019ta albums with cover designs by Saul Bass.<\/em><\/p>\n The albums in the new box set encapsulate what might be called Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s “Kozmigroov” period, although Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s name is absent from the generally thorough and wide-ranging Kozmigroov Index.<\/a> This is also his most commercial period. Prior to 1972 Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s recordings were soundtracks, performances with orchestras or improvised freakouts; from 1980 his music seems to be predominantly meditational (“New Age”, if you must) but I\u2019ve not heard most of it so can\u2019t say much about it. Kozmigroov is jazz fusion at core, usually combining a variety of disparate influences, which is what you have here: extended arrangements of jazz, funk, soul, rock, electronics, and occasional moments of traditional Japanese music. The continually changing group names testify to a restless nature: Floating Music<\/em> (1972) by Stomu Yamash\u2019ta & Come To The Edge (a British jazz group), Freedom Is Frightening<\/em> (1973) by Stomu Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s East Wind, The Soundtrack From “The Man From The East”<\/em> (1973) by Stomu Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s Red Buddha Theatre, One By One<\/em> (1974) by Stomu Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s East Wind, and Raindog<\/em> (1975) by Yamashta [sic]. Then there\u2019s the self-titled Go album (with a cover design by Saul Bass) and its live counterpart, Go…Live From Paris<\/em>. (A third and final album by the group, Go Too<\/em>, was released on Arista so isn\u2019t included in this set.) The sound evolves from semi-improvised instrumentals on the first few albums to songs and more rock-oriented arrangements on Raindog<\/em> and the Go releases, with the Steve Winwood songs on the latter coming across as a step into more predictable territory compared to the earlier recordings. The Go live album is much better than the uneven studio set, a sustained suite of songs and instrumentals linked by Klaus Schulze\u2019s synthesizers; Schulze gets a big cheer when the band is introduced. If you like jazz fusion there\u2019s a lot to enjoy in this box, a third of which I hadn\u2019t heard before. Dunes<\/em><\/a>, the opening track on Raindog<\/em>, unfolds over 15 minutes with an insistent groove that brings to mind the Mahavishnu Orchestra and early Santana, although Maxine Nightingale is a better singer than anyone on the Santana albums. And if you are<\/em> familiar with The Man Who Fell to Earth<\/em> then you get all of Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s music from the soundtrack scattered across these albums, most of which is only heard as extracts during the film.<\/p>\n With the recent reissue of Sunrise From West Sea “Live”<\/em><\/a> I\u2019m tempted to think that we might be due for a resurgence of interest in Stomu Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s music, but the prior availability of the Seasons<\/em> albums as individual CDs doesn\u2019t appear to have prompted a clamour for more. There\u2019s a lot more out there, however, especially the rare Japanese releases from the early 1970s. Follow the links below for more detail.<\/p>\n \u2022 The Infinite Horizons of Stomu Yamash\u2019ta<\/a> by Gregor Meyer. Previously on { feuilleton } If you\u2019ve ever watched The Man Who Fell to Earth then you\u2019ve heard music by Japanese percussionist and composer Stomu Yamash\u2019ta. The opening scene where David Bowie\u2019s duffle-coated alien stumbles down a hillside (falling to earth for a second time) is scored with the first few minutes of Poker Dice, the opening track on Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s … Continue reading “Stomu Yamash\u2019ta\u2019s Seasons”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Stomu Yamash\u2019ta's Seasons","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,3,20],"tags":[12374,1301,12372,12376,595,6306,11443,3873,12378,12375,12377,306,11971,924,4783,436,12373,3083,6305,274],"class_list":["post-21895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-music","category-science-fiction","tag-al-di-meola","tag-david-bowie","tag-go-group","tag-gregor-meyer","tag-ken-russell","tag-klaus-schulze","tag-kozmigroov","tag-mahavishnu-orchestra","tag-maxine-nightingale","tag-michael-shrieve","tag-miranda-rimington","tag-nicolas-roeg","tag-peter-maxwell-davies","tag-robert-altman","tag-santana","tag-saul-bass","tag-steve-winwood","tag-stomu-yamashta","tag-tony-palmer","tag-toru-takemitsu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-5H9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"stomu2.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/stomu2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"stomu3.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/stomu3.jpg\")
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\n\u2022 The Strange World of\u2026Stomu Yamash\u2019ta<\/a> by Miranda Rimington.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 The Devils on DVD<\/a>
\n\u2022 Directed by Saul Bass<\/a>
\n\u2022 Saul Bass album covers<\/a>
\n\u2022 Images by Robert Altman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"