As long as there is summer and people still want to hear/read about another Hajime Mizoguchi album, I’ll be more than happy to ride on that feeling. Continuing on a very long retrospective on Hajime’s work, see prior posts for his prior work, today we land on another of his wonderfully summer-esque albums — A Pretty Dance. Under the influence of Frank Zappa (of all people!) A Pretty Dance is knowingly more difficult than what you’ve heard before, but surprisingly has some of his most immediate, romantic work, too.
Hajime has always exuded class and good taste (of the better kind we all need), one listen to works like Oasis – Behind The Clear Waters and Halfinch Dessert immediately remind you of that. What could be hard to say was whether he had the ability to let his obviously high classically-trained cello technique get out of the way of his most cerebral music. A Pretty Dance was his attempt to let loose and go where the muse would take him.
For the first time, under his solo work, Hajime would invite others to help flesh out his initially created computer-based arrangements. Vocals, a first(!) to be heard on any Hajime album, would appear courtesy of the brilliant Seishiro Kusunose. Jun Aoyama of Killing Time and Hiroyasu Yaguchi of Real Fish would contribute real drums and sax, respectively. Kazuto Shimizu from Hikashu and Killing Time, would bring his leftfield, percussive touches. For such a supposedly “difficult” work, A Pretty Dance stands as one of his most luxurious-sounding.
“Plant Aquarium” introduces you to this new world. Personally, I hear the influence of Jean-Luc Ponty briefly rears its head only to mutate into a muscular take on Japanese fusion-influenced, New Age music. An actual guitar solo, punctuates a fiery start. Hajime’s angular cello playing is something to hear, sounding less abstract and clearly more “into it” than before.
If you can handle the math equation, songs like “Magada’s Time Report”, “Black Bird”, and “Club De Shanghai” evoke the high polyrhythmic fusion of deep L.A. Zappa. Lose limb musicality rules the day on those, in a way that should strike the fancy of those who like their music headier than heartier. Personally, I prefer Hajime’s peerless, romantic side.
On songs like “Lapped Rabbit”, “”Art Craft”, and “Water Dance”, it’s a treat to hear the highly melodic cello-driven neoclassical music Hajime is a master at (no pun intended) crafting. Go back to “Art Craft” where the nocturnal jazz leanings segue into some of his most yearning cello melodies. Here, the mix of real life musicians and techno wizardry translate into something meaningful. “Water Dance” has an unpretentious finality to it that only gets better every time you notice Seishiro Kusunose taking his equally unheralded vocal technique into the ether with Hajime.
You could always go back to no frills songs like “7th Blue”, “Monochrome”, and “Tokyo Reflection”. “Tokyo Reflection” captures that borderless magic once heard in Halfinch Dessert. There, the rhythms/influence of Africa, allowed Hajime to reshape his playing to a deeper, less mannered, feel. Here, time allowed a fuller reflection to create an unclassifiable song with loose “jazz” that definitively needs further exploration by others. There was jazz in the work of Chopin, Elgar, and Satie, all being Hajime’s most obvious, creative totems. There is a new jazz here.
Now, here’s hoping that in some far flung pedestal the stellar work of Hajime Mizoguchi affords him his time on that vaunted perch.