When we last left now Dr. Mitsuru Sawamura, it was 1989 and he had released a wonderful unclassifiable bit of Japanese New Age Jazz on Wacoal’s Newsic label (home of Yoshio Ojima, Motohiko Hamase, and Yoshiaki Ochi). Now, I want us to go back a few years, when he debuted as a solo artist, as Mich Live. Mich Live’s Message From Heart takes us even deeper down that spacious ambient jazz stew that Mitsuru could only create.
Just some brief background about Mich, as it explains a bit of what you’ll hear. Much like his previous bandmates in Interior, Mitsuru actually began his musical career in America. Around the mid ‘70s his family appeared to live in Florida where he would attend school, only to graduate and get admitted to the same Berklee College of Music that he’d meet other Japanese-American immigrants like Daisuke Hinata and be inspired by the wayward sounds of YMO’s BGM, to join up, and create music just as influential.
Mitsuru had always seemed to have the more earthy tastes. Before joining Interior, Mitsuru had set aside his classically-trained piano studies for the more free-spirited environs of the sax. An early and continuing love of the music of Miles Davis spurred him to explore music like funk, free jazz, and other more rhythmic-oriented styles in that vein. By the late ‘70s, Mitsuru had moved to L.A. and was talented enough to make it as a sideman/session cat for someone as big as head Superfreak, Rick James.
After leaving Interior, right after the debut, Mitsuru would head to Japan and contribute to the pioneering work of various musicians like Pierre Barouh, Mari Iijima, Kazumi Watanabe, and Yukihiro Takahashi (to name precious few). It was his very minimal take on sax skronk and leftfield neoclassical compositions that graced such releases like Le Pollen, Rosé, and Ichiko Hashimoto’s Beauty. I believe, it’s all this side work that prepared him for the very Miles-esque sound of his debut as Mich Live.
For a saxophonist, Mitsuru sure knows how lead from behind and make an appearance when it matters. That’s the most surprising thing about Message From Heart, how little of him (in practice) you hear, but how importantly what you do hear is just in perfect amounts. Taking a front seat as sometime percussionist, as sometime synthesizer keyboardist, or as simple sound designer, Mitsuru captures the ideas of peak Miles — giving space for your band to flower in spite of being the band leader.
It’s this selfless stuff that allows Mich Live’s Dear Heart to explore something as simple as the symbology of the eco-world we’re endlessly destroying to create songs that can veer from askew African-tinged funk workouts to barely there, impressionistic ambient music that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Penguin Cafe Orchestra record or other barely discovered J-New Age ones. For a record like this to come out on the Dear Heart label, proud purveyor of countless Taeko Ohnuki and EPO records, speaks volumes to the very inviting “Pop” undertones of this album. Deeply unpretentious, it’s brainy ambient jazz that you can easily play while entertaining others.
I’ll spare you from describing the music itself since there isn’t one overriding musical style but invite you to get in that innocent space Mitsuru inhabited for this one. When you hear him, doesn’t it sound like it matters?