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This Is It!

Mosaic

Review by Gary Hill

This Is It! is a trio consisting of Satoko Fujii  (piano),  Takashi Itani (percussion) and Natsuki Tamura (trumpet). The music they create is a fusion-sort of affair that is often brash and jarring, but also compelling. I've included this release under prog because of both the artistic angle and the fusion one. This is quite an interesting album. As strange as it is, there is something really alluring about it.

This review is available in book (paperback and hardcover) form in Music Street Journal: 2022  Volume 1. More information and purchase links can be found at: garyhillauthor.com/Music-Street-Journal-2022.

Track by Track Review
Habana’s Dream
Piano brings this into being with fast-paced lines. Other instruments join after a time, and we're out into a journey that has moments of strange bombast merged with sections of melodic brilliance. The end result is a piece that is at once weird and compelling. It's also dynamic, working through a number of shifts and changes. At almost nine-and-a-half-minutes of music, it's also the second shortest piece here. This thing gets decidedly crazed at point. There is a percussion solo built into it, as well.
Dieser Zug
The mellow vibe arrangement that starts things here presents a serious contrast after the crazed ending of the other piece. This is the epic of the disc at more than 14-and-a-half minutes of music. This evolves gradually, but largely remains understated and rather spacey for a long time. This cut moves into all kinds of different territory further down the road. There is a piano solo section later. This thing really gets involved and pretty crazy later along its musical path.
Kumazemi
A killer jazz jam serves as the opening to this. This number is a bit less "odd," coming in more along the lines of standard fusion as it gets going. It eventually works into another percussion solo further down the road. It does tend to get into stranger zones further down the road.
Sleepless Night
There really is a feeling of a "Sleepless Night" to this. A lot of the cut has a dream=like quality, but of the nightmare variety. At a little over eight-minutes, this is the shortest piece here. It has a lot of twists and turns, but overall remains fairly consistent in mood.
76 RH

More crazed fusion jamming, we get a percussion solo on this piece. This is another slab of killer strange music that works.

 
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