Kaoru Abe
 

Okay, I've had JAZZ BED for years and loved it but I've decided today to delve deeper into this man's work. Listening to OVERHANG PARTY right now and it's absolutely mindblowing. I'd heard his later work wasn't as good but I think it's absolutely brilliant.

http://experimentaletc.blogspot.com/...kaoru-abe.html <--- every album he's ever been apart of..

who else is a fan?

Wouldn't call myself a fan, but I like the stuff I've heard from him.

Didn't know he had an album called Overhang Party, for a second I thought you were talking about the band and wondered how the hell they could be related since Abe has been dead for 30 years or so.

Actually I think the album is called Senzei, but the "group" is Kaoru Abe and Sabu Toyozumi as Overhang Party.. I think.

It's a double LP according to discogs, with one record being called Overhang Party and the other one Senzei.
http://www.discogs.com/release/843923

Abe rules! probably the best free sax player to come out of Japan... worked with Masayuki Takayanagi argueably the best free improv/nosie guitarist from Japan (yeah probably better than Haino, Mayuzumi...etc etc)

fuq that noize
merzbow is the only jax
kaz
jaz

the only abe or takayanagi i've heard are the two live records they did together, Mass Projection and Gradually Projection. Both are really good, but also a demanding listen.

I love love love Abe. I don't really know a huge amount of his stuff, but of what I've heard it's his solo records that really astound me, especially Winter 1972 (which you should get ASAP if you don't have it). Something about that unbelievable tone just screaming out alone in a shitty concrete club, where you can literally hear him playing with him self via the reverberations in the room, in these just so totally solitary extended solo improvisations... it stops me in my tracks every time I hear it. One of my all time favourite (and most underrated) 'out' jazz musicians.

downloading it now

He's great.

the essential merzbow to me is Rainbow Electronics II and Batzoutui w/ Memorial Gadgets, i can skip alot of the rest he's awesomely prolific and impossible to keep up with.

If anyone's in the mood, I'm doing a jazz set on my radio show tonight at 11 BST, with a heavy focus on quite 'out' stuff, and I'll be playing a bit of Abe. Listen in! (You can also tune in via Itunes, sometimes more reliably)

thanks