Graded on a Curve: New in Stores for June 2019, Part One June 6, 2019 By Joseph Neff

REISSUE/ARCHIVAL PICKS: Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit, April is the cruellest month

Chicago the band are responsible for a higher than usual percentage of used-bin cluttering shit, but their debut as Chicago Transit Authority has its moments. One of them, “Free Form Guitar,” ripped a hole in the known universe of Japanese guitarist Takayanagi, leading him to renounce the inside scene where he had built a sizable reputation and head for the outer regions of (a cited contemporary is guitar monster Sonny Sharrock and countryman saxophonist Kaoru Abe, with whom Takayanagi played), free improvisation (another peer is sui generis Brit string-wrangler Derek Bailey), and noise (Blank Forms states Takayanagi paved the way for Keiji Haino and Otomo Yoshihide).

Had this been released as planned by ESP-Disk in ’75, Takayanagi’s influence in the years after would’ve surely spread beyond Japan; issued on CD by Jinya Disk in ’91, the man’s formidable heft eventually did have a global (u-ground) impact. Featuring two cuts on side one and the 20-minute “My Friend, Blood Shaking My Heart” on the flip, the record begins in wild abstract territory (Kengi Mori starting out on flute and progressing to bass clarinet, action rightly pegged as Dolphy-esque) and culminates in the utter freakout zone. Likened by the label to Coltrane’s The Olatunji Concert, Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun, and ’s Echo, April is notable for having the smallest band, completed by Nobuyoshi Ino (bass and cello) and Hiroshi Yamazaki (percussion). Takayanagi really ratchets up the mayhem, natch. A http://www.thevinyldistrict.com/the-tvd-record-store-club/2019/06/graded-on-a-curve-new-in-stores-for-june- 2019-part-one/