Pat Metheny
Tokyo Day Trip Live

"Tokyo Day Trip Live" is a work to highlight for several reasons.

It is an assembly of five unreleased tracks with a duration just under 40 minutes. It is the natural continuation of a very successful studio work, which I highly recommend for the purity of the recovered sound. It is the challenge that skilled musicians like Metheny, Sanchez, and McBride undertake, expanding and harmonizing jazz concepts, in a form of full freedom of expression that should not be ignored.

It is the continuation, the development of the theme of a modern sound, a genre I like to call Urban Jazz, which recovers the sounds of the past but renders them acoustic and deep, developing them with an instrumental simplicity that allows one to fully enjoy the abilities of the individuals and the thematic nuances.

Finally, a recording that does justice, as the studio work was not too satisfying, which helps savor, albeit in a conceptually peripheral way, the path undertaken by the trio. A splendid cover, which picks up the image of the studio work but for the Japanese edition shifts to oriental subjects and images. The colors seem the same, the hand painting is the same.

It is customary for the artist to release live works for the Japanese market, to which he has always dedicated particular care, and over the years, he has created a parallel collection where, compared to studio works, there is always some surprise.

The notable tracks are "Travelling fast," which features fascinating dynamics, and "Back Arm & Blackcharge," which is a masked, rock, distorted version rich in distortions of "Day Trip," the excellent closing track of the studio work.

The remaining songs (Tromso, Inori, The Night Becomes You) do not stand out for freshness but serve to confirm the sounds Pat, the revisionist, tackled in "Speaking of Now."

Label Nonesuch, year 2008.