Winter heat from an unlikely source. Perhaps I’m showing my bias as a violinist, but I have to share another of my favorite (sadly unknown) releases from my fellow brethren. Another wonderful cross-thatched affair of fourth world and new age grooves not from the west but this time from Japan’s other uber-talented, and quite prolific, violinist Masatsugu Shinozaki, aka Masa. 1992’s A Roar Of The Tiger isn’t your typical New Age album of violinist adds some synth keyboards and calls it a day. In it, I hear strains of deep Japanese traditional music, esoteric, aesthetic Japanese ambient minimalism, and that lustrous unmoored strain of worldly musical influence I’m trying to redefine as a truer kind of “fourth world” idea.
One would think the classically-trained Masatsugu would not venture into the realm of world music as evidence on A Roar Of The Tiger but his whole career had been marked by doing unconventional moves. Born and raised in Tokyo to an even bigger name in the violin world, pioneering Japanese violinist Hiroaki Shinozaki who pushed him to take up the violin from a young age. Around the age of 17, after the death of his father, Masa spurred anymore classical education, dropped out of school, turning his eye toward rock’n’roll. At the age of 17, Masatsugu became an in-demand session musician for countless Japanese jazz, funk, and pop musicians.
In the late ‘70s, Masatsugu started to toy with his own compositions. Either working with a pioneering world music-influenced group called “Fu-ga-sho” or with an actual orchestra he’d dub Masatsugu Shinozaki Strings, Masa laced all sorts of tracks from the likes of Asami Kobayashi, Rajie, and Yas-Kaz with his wonderfully sinewy idea of string arrangements. It was his work, though, with Yas-Kaz and his own quite esoteric soundtracks to “River Of Fireflies” (Hotaru Gawa, 螢川) that reintroduced him to the influence of erhu music, instruments like the “kokyu” and “niko” and ideas that were far from the Japanese pop sphere.
It’s hard to distill one perfect album to promote from Masatsugu’s solo career. Most are hard enough to find and even harder yet to completely pin down! However, when you’ve had musicians like Midori Takada, Yoshiaki Ochi, and Yas-Kaz join you on such works, it’s not hard to understand that they’re on the same wavelength as your creative vibration. If you can find them, all four prior records on King Records show his violin-centric take on New Age, African, and Pan Pacific fusion music. As for me, I think A Roar Of The Tiger takes it as his most fully-formed album.
Featuring some richly detailed electronics, all sorts of insanely deep percussion work by Yas Kaz, and Masa’s violin transforming in tone into quicksilver stylings unlike much else in his oeuvre, A Roar Of The Tiger hits at being far less quiet than the rest of his more contemplative work. Here there are tracks with squalling lead work. Here there are tracks where he lays back entirely and just trickles out mini waves of atmosphere (undoubtedly moved/created by some intricate gadgetry involved).
Somehow, here, Masatsugu makes his violin turn into a percussive thing that just resonates perfectly with this exploratory side, when it’s not acting like quicksilver forming searing leads elsewhere. Music to charm a snake? I’d call this that. Anyway, enough of my jabbering, enjoy…