Take a look at the image above. What you see is an image of a creature belonging to the Daphnia genus. Entirely microscopic in size, a plankton that’s aquatic in nature, and unable to move (or to put it precisely: float) without something else propelling it along — much like certain jellyfish — it’s both seemingly powerless but entirely powerful in the way it influences life found in our oceans as food, health gauge, and much else. It’s this creature that inspired a floating organism of a different type (Akira Sakata) to create his magnum opus to that vital symbol of life.
Akira Sakata, a true giant of Japanese jazz music, began his trajectory not in music but in ecological studies, specializing in marine biology and fishery. Born in 1945, in Kure-city, Hiroshima, a few months removed from its decimation by nuclear bombing, from a young age Akira understood the connection between ecology and humanity. Akira had to find a way to survive from the closeness of rubble. His own early years were lived close to an American naval base where in between helping out at home in their farm, he was able to feel the pull of American culture, all the while hearing all these other foreign radio signals — Soviet and Chinese) — full of this “foreign” music that would (in many ways) inspire his future tastes.
In Tokyo, he explored the full potential of jazz music. An earlier love for the music of Charlie Parker and Art Pepper, shifted towards the freer jazz of Coltrane whose spiritually-inspired music bore something deep into Akira’s mindspace. Gone were his early days of clarinet study and in came his exploration of alto sax. His interest in plankton study at Hiroshima University mutated to follow in the footsteps of his new model. Jazz was it for him, as much as his curiosity for that small creature inspired his professional career.
Translating that microscopic attention to detail that found him becoming one of Japan’s leading authorities in daphnia into becoming its most slippery jazz musicians came with time. Early “free” music with burgeoning groups formed under the names of Yosuke Yamashita and Maki Asakawa gave way to ideas with more structure under his own tutelage.
On Better Days, Akira would convene the avantgarde pop group/no wave miscreants Wha-Ha-Ha creating two trailblazing albums — Getahaitekonakucha and 死ぬ時は別 — that shifted his vision further into the void where jazz wasn’t quite jazz anymore. On his own records, records like テノク・サカナ, Tacology and Mooko, his own alto sax might take a background role to other ideas he wanted to pull under the microscope: drum machine rhythms, electronic dance, and hip-hop, or folk music, in a way that spoke to him. Sprawling creatively, his Akira Sakata And His Da-Da-Da Orchestra (with Yasuaki Shimizu) or Akira Sakata Trio, still found him with another limb floating in the jazz world.
However, it appears that working with one Bill Laswell, who brought his production technique to Japan, afforded him the possibilities of finding a way to marry all his exploits and settle them down for good. 1988’s Mooko, recorded in NYC with Bill, felt like it had the potential to be something different. Eyeing that dubby, world music-esque sound Bill had injected into the music of Toshinori Kondo, Genji Sawai, and Mr. Sakomoto’s Neo-Geo, Akira took his first steps towards injecting sonic space into his music. Songs like “Hitsujikai No Bansan” and “Mooko” hit the mark when a few others were slightly off target. However, Mooko was just the starting point for a new beginning.
A few years later, in 1989, after Akira began exploring 360-degree ambient environmental music and deep Japanese folk in Vs Spherical Sound — when Bill extended an invitation to come back to NYC, Akira did so with a far more learned idea of what he wanted to do. Much less busy sounding, the key word here was “atmosphere, with Bill expanding Akira’s backing, filling it out with every current member of Material. Akira himself contributed heart-wrenching solos that spoke more than jived.
“Daphnia” speaks well of what awaits for you in the rest of the album. Lopped off by Bill Laswell’s percussive bass playing, it grows to a Miles Davis’ Get Up With It scorched fusion, introducing Akira’s slippery alto sax wriggling it’s way through all sorts of sampled and imagined percussion by Aiyb Dieng and Nicky Skopelitis’s equally imaginative guitar impressions.
Holding no bars open, much of Silent Plankton is massive. Massive track lengths, massive ruminations, massive sonic pillars full of glorious, watery noise, just capturing your ears, willing to drop you further into its mood. This is music that floats but it does so via dark matter, inertia, where gravity comes through minimal movement.
What’s genuinely surprising about Silent Plankton are the long, drawn out moments of beauty. In songs like “Innocent Forest” we get to hear Akira Sakata create these not-entirely serene, alien soundscapes that just grow organically as its own form of ambient jazz. It’s just wonderfully meditative without any root in a single style — once again, just a nostalgic atmosphere to something special. Restraint, a huge godsend to the best music, allows Bill to add some wonderfully heartfelt moments to songs like “Look At Me”.
Then as you’re really immersed in this environment, “Silent Plankton” sends you off with one last rumination, building on Akira’s wonderful almost shakuhachi-esque tone (one played on clarinet or the instrument itself) bridging the gap between the ageless, insular indigenous Japanese Ainu folk tradition and this new, uncharted territory they chanced upon by spelunking through something fierce. What we’re left holding is some truly marine jazz that sounds like little else you’ll hear in your life and quite a giant step for someone who once dreamt about being a fisherman (then found out what his greatest catch would really turn out to be)…