There are and were good music bands in Japan. Recently Japanese music are thought to be VISUAL bands like X Japan. But some decades ago, there were very good jazz bands and fusion music bands.
Especially Casiopea, Prism, and Square were the most famous and kept long time popularity in Japanese fusion music history.
Japanese fusion bands are not like American jazz bands. It’s natural because America is the birthplace of Jazz, and no other countries musicians can have the same jazz feeling in the play.
When Japanese musicians plays Jazz or Fusion music, it becomes like rock oriented fusion music because jazzy and bluesy feeling is not like American bands at all. Most of band music players in Japan are more influenced by Rock than Jazz first of all. So this is a natural result of jazz fusion bands.
If you are ready for this Japanese jazz fusion music, maybe you can enjoy a little different taste of fusion music in Japanese bands.
One of my recommendations is Prism’s debut album called PRISM ( photo ). This is featuring rock music like guitar but they are trying to express fusion music by their own comprehension. Don’t expect Jazzy flavor from this, I think this album is not jazz fusion album at all. This is more like a jazz rock album, which is closer to Rock music.
Probably you will find a good guitar player in this album. There are 2 guitarists in this album, Akira Wada and Katsutoshi Morizono, and both of them are still guitar player’s idols in Japan. In this album, Akira Wada is playing more leading parts than Katsutoshi Morizono. Some may think it’s simple and noisy guitar play, but he actually influenced more on new Japanese guitarists in 1980′s to late 1990′s.
His play style is like Gary Moor in UK, and probably he respects Al DI Meola or some other fast playing guitarists. Most of the songs here are featuring Akira Wada’s amazing fast guitar play. But on the songs, Morning Light and Love Me, he shows a tasteful guitar play too.
It’s certainly a little too aggressive in many songs and too noisy. But some songs are indeed good guitar textbooks.
