I think that just about does it. If you had on your bingo card Toshiyuki Honda to complete the Japanese “saxophonist goes Avant Pop” game, you’re the winner now! Joining the likes of Yasuaki Shimizu, Genji Sawai, and Hiroyasu Yaguchi, comes Toshiyuki’s Saxophone Music, another album redefining what is exactly that: music played by saxophonists. Living in the same parallel world of dark Japanese electronics, urban influenced sonics, and modal jazz Pop, so does Toshiyuki’s work here form a demarcation line towards this new, semi-uncharted territory.
A Tokyo native since birth in 1957, Toshiyuki’s forever loves have always been the sax, dinos, and exercise. Widely known in Japan as “Dinosax”, it’s his love of dinosaurs and he’s equally gigantic sounding soprano sax tone that’s made him a very popular, in demand figure in the J-Jazz world. Working either as session man for others like Isao Suzuki, Kazumi Watanabe, and Tsugutoshi Goto or as steady, commissioned composer for various CM and TV/movie soundtracks, Toshiyuki has never been starving for expression.
Toshiyuki Honda’s solo work began by mining the L.A. fusion sound. Early releases like with his revolving backup band Burning Waves yielded albums like Boomerang, Easy Breathing. His debut, Burnin’ Waves, featured members of iconic West Coast Jazz fusion outfit, Seawind. For a while, it seemed Toshiyuki’s solo work would revolve around respectable but oft-charted waters in that vein. In the mid ‘80s, Toshiyuki sought a turning point.
Maybe it was the work of fellow session artist turned Art Pop experimenter, Tsugutoshi Gotoh, or simply that Toshiyuki was becoming bored with the Jazz-Funk sound, but on 1984’s Modern, Toshiyuki turned his eye towards electronic instruments, ceding the pull of his music to all sorts of modern sonic gadgets. His music became moodier, less oppressively upbeat, and far more varied in style.
1985’s Saxophone Music was his attempt to create a “new front for a total sound”, translating as reimagining what kind of music his sax could perform. Toshiyuki wasn’t one to go at things in half measures. Songs that derive their influences from Balkan folk music, Viennese waltz, and the Charleston (of all things!) survey the further end of his creative horizon, to take these same influences and transmute them with all these leftfield sonic ideas and offbeat artistic Pop music he was also into. Here’s where the Shimizu and Sawai comparisons make sense.
Setting aside all the various sax sizes he uses to play different roles in these compositions, Toshiyuki navigates things like E-MU Emulator II sampler and the classic DX-7 to fashion a dark, sexy atmosphere very much in tune with the midpoint between Ornette Coleman-style free jazz and the “wavy” instrumental electro bopping around in the underground. Heck, you might hear the influence of Rockit or the salvageable explorations by mid ‘80s Miles. You get the funk, but it is FUNK. You get the air, but it’s floating, here. On tracks like “夜想曲” you get luxurious atmospheric jazz that is far sexier than it should be.
What are the standouts? “バード・ヴァレイ(Bird Valley)” taps into the mutant jazz/funk Tsugutoshi was similarly mining. “ロコモーション (The Loco-Motion)” wouldn’t sound out of place on some no-wave canon. My favorite, “オウ・ロアン・デュ・モン・スーヴェニア (Au Loin De Mon Souvenir)” imagines smooth jazz feeling the effects of Japanese ambient minimalism and says: “I can dig that” and does. “舟歌 (Funauta)” taps into some unexpected G-Funk meanderings, as smooth as butter. All instrumental, Saxophone Music, puts the sax at the forefront, inviting us to imagine it as this forward-thinking and -sounding instrument, that can POP and achieves in cementing it through some of the most wiggiest, subversive urban jazz found on that side of the ocean.