Vieles an Japanese Blues gefällt mir. Tolle Ideen, coole Arrangements, gut gespielt. Was mich wirklich nervt sind die billig klingenden Synthi-Keys. Geht für mich garnicht. Schade.

From the start there is a fresh outlook. Intrada comes over as quite relaxed and a well-balanced mix. Japanese Blues is quite a spacious number, with a delicate poise. In a certain respect, this seems to be the overall essence of this album. A Drummer even retains a similar atmosphere, rather than being a rhythmic dervish in the style of Krupa or Rich (childhood idols), which one might expect. So, overall the album has some interesting instrumental ambience, fairly well saturated with the saxophone, but then that is Ruediger Kramer's trademark after all. It is to be expected. Scratch has a nice instrumentality. There is a refreshing perspective in Searching For An Answer. Altogether this is a fairly typical production in some respects, although I can hear, so I think, more going on in the background, which fills the tracks out nicely. A few tracks bearing up moreso than others perhaps, from that perspective. Nice to hear more diversity in the musicality.

Für das Genre akzeptabel. Kann man hören. Acceptable for the genre. Can we hear.

j'avais trouvé "Urgent Question" intéressant, mais lassant. Poursuivant dans la même veine, "Japanese Blues" parvient cette fois à un équilibre subtil entre expérimentation obsessionnelle et ambiant séduisant. Sans délaisser ses constructions mélodiques erratiques (un son qui me fait toujours penser à Ted Milton), Rudieger Kramer trouve par instant une certaine puissance évocatrice très coldwave (le titre éponyme pourrait avoir quelques parentés avec le "Nervous Guy" de Tuxedomoon) et réussit presque à captiver l'auditeur tout au long de ces cinq quarts d'heure, une durée certes maximale mais qui permet de s'immerger pleinement dans quelques-unes de ses plus belles compositions: 'japanese blues', 'Sad Question', 'Tolstoys ghost singing and typewriting', 'Scratch', 'little ocean waves' ...

Schön abwechslungsreiches , unorthodoxes ,unkonventionelles und sehr gut produziertes Album. Nicht immer einfach aber auch nie langweilig . U . L . I .

I don't remeber much titles or albums which include both words - japanese, and blues. I liked last album more I must admit because sax sound was more in your head jazzy and noisy. It means not that this album is bad. No way. Direct in first track we hear Jon Hassel approach (ok Hassel is trumpet but what the hell) repetitiive ambient, persistant percussions, developement's which develops further on last album in more soft sense. It is beautiful powerfull piece again. As i said last time listening Kramer I am completely sucker for sax , even in this "new" Hassel sound and arrangements. Don't read this wrong. This is Ruediger Kramer's sound not Hassel. Just principle is similar. Thanks for this!

Einfühlsamer fein arrangierter pulsierender Jazz. Schöne spherische Grundstimmung mit schwebendem Saxophon. Musik einfach zum relaxen.

Thank you for sharing it!

I must confess that I have not listened to the entire album : it is a bit too long for me ; matter of time and schedule. But I have dowloaded the album and burnt it to listen on my HiFi to the tracks Balthaz refers as the best. All the soundings are very interesting, I should say rich and well used. But for me, this kind of music lacks a little melody. Balthaz and Ivan seem to be more into this type, so I advise listeners to refer to their comments. "Searching for an answer", I istened to incidentaly, sounded very good to me. So you see, "matter of tastes"! Since I have the album on CD, I will listen to it at times. Anyway, it is a lot of work, and thanks for sharing.

Well, we must go into the album with the expectation that this is experimental and will be pushing against the boundaries of what we are most familiar with, and thus we will not be shocked but pleasantly surprised! We also need to think of each instrumental entity as an unique individual with personality, temperament, hopes, and feelings in an album such as this. I would also describe this music as sometimes being on the avant-garde side of jazz. I don't know what that percussive snapping was in "Japanese Blues" but it gave the piece a shock like effect to the ears, along with the minimalistic weaving in and out of the other instruments. Very interesting and unique. The drums, wind and piano in "a drummer" were very nice and seemed to come from everywhere. The piece "sad question" seemed to strive to have a distinctive melody and was actually quite lovely, sounding like a late night, lonely and sad song. The different instruments singing off of the others' tunes seemed oblivious to each other. I loved the use of instruments in "get it softly!" which was confusing with flashes of exquisite musical sound flying in from here and there. There was a heart beat thrumming running along the base of this piece with the saxophone flying over the top of the other instruments. "Scratch" was somewhat indeterminate sounding with quite a dissonance of instruments. It had lots of interesting and unusual percussion sounds and the lovely sax. I really liked the intro to "joyful ride" with the bass and sax and other instruments ambling by to introduce themselves. Delightful. I liked the give and take with the instruments in "little ocean waves" and the Asian sounding "rain splashing down" was like a Haiku, simple and descriptive. And "happy child singing" made me smile. Good use of sound integrated in with the voices of children. Overall I think all the musical and instrumental layers were clean sounding, making a good presentation, and all were added as a painter adds each stroke of paint to a masterpiece. I am not capable of determining whether this album is a masterpiece or not, but I really enjoyed its unique outlook and expressive nature. To me it was like reading and interpreting some excellent, quality poetry. Its good for the brain cells and quite enjoyable.