Hideo Yamaki: Shadow Run (1993)

And now, joining Genji Sawai in the next round of jazz not jazz, is the immensely talented drummer Hideo Yamaki. In essence, Hideo Yamaki’s Shadow Run, released in 1993, covers similar creative territory. However, the output here remains vastly different, even if some of the same cohorts help Hideo flesh out his own vision. Produced by Bill Laswell and joined by the likes of Yasuaki Shimizu, Ginger Baker, Toshinori Kondo, Bernie Worrell, and Foday Musa Suso, it’s quite possibly Bill’s last (successful) attempt to present the next evolution in whatever ideas Japan wanted to flesh out of jazz. With Genji, it was Miles’ On the Corner. Here, it appears to be the sonorous ideas of Miles’ Get Up With It — basically, global fusion without a distinct corner to lean into — were now reimagined through a distinct, Japanese filter.

Not leaning into anything had always been Hideo Yamaki’s calling card. Growing up, in Okinawa, Hideo would listen to jazz and tango music coming through overseas radio. His first instrument were drums. And drums would remain his instrument throughout his career. First, he began to play jazz music under the tutelage of percussionist Hideo Ichikawa and then would translate into session work with other notable Japanese musicians like Mikio Masuda, Kazumi Watanabe, and Yuji Toriyama.

Throughout this experimented time, though, he’d started to make inroads into more above ground Japanese Pop music. Whether drumming on albums by Judy Anton, Mioko Yamaguchi, Mari Iijima, (and tons of other essential J-Pop artists I’m not listing) or on the work commanded of him by future Mariah bandmate Yasuaki Shimizu. Hideo would come to rival Pecker and Shuichi “Ponta” Murakami as drummers that simply brought something special to whatever they were entrusted to play on. Always inspired, if you heard a track with Hideo, you were bound to be hooked and to dig for more of his work. Simply imagine Mariah’s Utakata No Hibi without his rhythms and realize how much less of a revelation it would be.

It appears, though, that in the early ‘90s, Hideo wanted to strike back to this jazz roots with all this newfound experience and knowledge he had cultivated. He wanted to impress something new into the Japanese jazz realm. Not content with merely making a milquetoast jazz album, Hideo enlisted one wayward American producer and one old Mariah bandmate to help him experiment with world music.

Under the dub-minded ears of producer Bill Laswell, Hideo tried to present modal world music that dove deeply into African rhythms but tweaked them with experimental Japanese touches. Yasuaki, co-producing, found ways to integrate the motley crew of known musicians Bill brought over to help — Ginger Baker and Bernie Worrell. Truth be told, it’s not like Hideo needed someone to flesh out his influences. Learned and imagined techniques had helped him before create songs that tweaked all sorts of world music for the less stylistically faithful Japanese musicians. It’s a spirit that worked for him before and one (I argue) allowed him to really stretch out what he can do, with the right musicians backing him up here.

On Shadow Run, Hideo and Yasuaki would begin a track laying down keyboard lines and percussion. Meanwhile, Bill would apply his ambient dub technique to reconfigure the arrangements into something less placeable. The opening track “Shadow Run” gives you a small taste of what that means.

Stretching past the 10 minute mark, “Shadow Run” explores Hideo’s fusion of Southeast Asian folk music and heavy jazz funk. Yasuaki himself does his best to copy or be influenced by the floating organ work of Fela Kuti and the man himself, Miles Davis (circa Agartha/Pangea). A slippery track, it hovers from truly heavy, complex Afro-Jazz Funk and ethereal fourth world music.

No A-side or B-side to dissect, on its sole CD release, Shadow Run flows as a long trek where Bill could be free to add his own two-cents as well. Witness “The Black Hole” where his iconic fretless bass lines dance around the spiritual jazz being skronked by Yasuaki’s sax. Hideo rarely rises above staying in the background but the background he lays is one that perfectly works to entrance, you the listener. Once he lays down the kick the tracks gains a different funk that doesn’t just recall the heady work of Jack DeJohnette but throws it down through Tony Allen’s rabbit hole where the mind and booty never cease to meet. You can bang your head to such an epic but there are moments where visions of Africa and some imagined diaspora never lag far behind, I’m pretty sure Bernie went “there” for this one.

Shadow Run has way too many highlights to spotlight, but some of them are reserved for the sides where Bill steps aside to let Hideo and Yasuaki explore all sorts of motherlands, of whatever instrument they’re holding, propels them to. “Fulu Fulu”’s wooden arrangements speak of it. Yasuaki affecting the spirit of Pharoah Sanders seems to be in it. Then you have melodic workouts like “Gri Gri” which are peerless in their own nation, because they seem to be of an imagined one. What sounds like accordion blending into mbiras, into digital synthesis, into slippery malleted percussion, sounds like Gambian kora player Foday Musa Suso understanding (quietly) what Hideo and Yasuaki were after — a melting fusion. The trapezing samples panning around it cement this.

What year was Shadow Run released? 1993. For such a year, little else sounded like it on their shores. And to this day, I imagine, little else might sound like this, in your collection. The Mkwaju Ensemble tried it before, but now imagine the “other” side coming in through too. Fourth world, it may be, perhaps now, more than ever, our world it needs to be.

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