Takeo Moryama Quartet
Flush Up

THE REVIEW

"A stone rolling down a hill never knows its trajectory": the drummer of Yosuke Yamashita's fiery trio, the man of the piano goes solo and propels Japanese jazz beyond the thin line between the humanly conceivable and the unfeasible, between the incredible and the (almost) monstrous, marrying with his zen and Coltrane quartet, men and gods.

A drummer with dangerous progressive tendencies, as mentioned, gets the chance to pound the skins in the worst (best) of possible free-bop academies, where the encounter between avant-garde and history is a metal suit and a man in command plays a piano while it is set on fire.

What has been defined as "melodic drumming" is here literally transported beyond the sound barrier, into the aural dimension where the cataracts of rains are preserved and where the forges of thunder rest. "Flush Up" is the exhalation, live, 1977, Nipponic superiority so evident it creates serious embarrassment on the other side of Bering, literally pulverizing the original's crest. A masterpiece, unique in its (vast) genre: spiritual elevation, percussion that becomes meditation, solos where it is impossible to count the Charleston-snare-kick touches (which in climaxes are perhaps 10-15 per second—listen to believe) and a light compactness as air, even in moments when the four rise to the sky and anyone would want to smash their instrument. Nothing, iron discipline and improvisation, the perfection of opposites.

Execution of frenzied precision, something unheard of that sweeps the audience, leaving them almost without applause; when Takeo literally climbs on the drums while continuing to caress them (11th minute), “Flush Up” is just over halfway. After 18 minutes, the finale explodes and only tatters of the execution remain in memory, just the memory of a phrase, the sense of the haiku.
Moving on: "Softly As in A Morning Sunrise" and "Yellow Bear" are played poetry, Tomoki Takahashi's sax is a goldfinch, Moryama colors a sonnet with percussive dew that piano and bass brush with breaths, not notes. It is not a matter of brute technique: here is something devoted to the cult of the mind and the firm conviction that man can, with his inner power, literally do anything.

Once again, the number ones, once again the legend in just over half an hour. Hear it, love it, and break your head as it happened to me, learn, love again, and thus live. Jazz at this height is time in its purest dimension, personal, Heideggerian.

Be pure: "if you understand one thing in its entirety, you can understand everything".