Cassiopea

I found Mint Jams on vinyl 20 years ago - interesting but not as balls grabbing as fellow countryman and guitarwizz Kazumi Watanabe. Check out his albums Mobo 1,  Mobo 2, Spice of Life, Spice of Life Too (their spelling) - the latter two with Bill Bruford and Jeff Berlin as the rhythm section.

krusty wrote: I have a tape of theirs at home which if I remember correctly is called Make Up City? I haven't played it in some time but as far as I remember it had a couple of decent tracks on there. Most of it sounded much like Mezzoforte, sort of lightweight really. BTW, Did Kazumi Watanabe have a brother Dick?

Sadeo W, the (tenor) sax player (who's albums I have range from a tribute to Charlie Parker through to sub-David Sanborn),  is not related as far as I know but.........I never really checked. I think Watanabe is a fairly common Japanese family name.

I wouldn't argue the Mezzoforte parallel either. Clearly from the amount of plays, I think other Japanese bands are more memorable, e.g. Kenso,

Kennedy (Kennedy ! is particularly whacked out live recording - hear them destroy Birds Of Fire!!!!),

and more recently Machine & The Synergistic Nuts.

However, Kazumi Watanabe has always sounded the most original, the one part Japanese to 4 part western jazz rock heard in many albums - especially the one's I've listed previously (Pandoro added here for good measure!).

By the way whilst on eastern influences in jazz rock fusion, must mention Franco-Vietnamese Nguyen Le (check the Act Records catalogue for album info).  Holdsworthian in some of his playing, the Vietnamese influences can be quite strong in his albums - and he does attract some pretty well-known session players to his side.

patomtz wrote: who knows about this band?? I really want to hear it!! is like a mix of progressive jazz isnt it?

Hello!

I'm quite aware of this band and I like their music a lot.

The Casiopea albums that I had listened to were "Asian Dreamer" or "Asian Dreamer 2" and "Material."  A notable Casiopea piece is "Space Road" where there is a fast unison solo done on keyboards, guitar and bass being backed by a somewhat fast metronomic bossanova or samba-like beat.  "Asayake," "Domino Line" and "Eyes of The Mind" are also good tracks.  Issei Noro's guitar work is quite phenomenal as he could shred like Al di Meola but can also play with restraint like Lee Ritenour.  "Material" is much more smooth jazz sounding but is quite interesting unlike the usual "elevator jazz."  "Longing" is my favorite track from "Material."