Jazz /
Tippin' On Through
Tippin' On Through, by tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy, stands as a defining statement from one of West Coast jazz’s most eloquent voices. Recorded and released in 1965, the album pairs Amy’s warm, hard‑bop tenor with soulful grooves, crisp arrangements, and sympathetic ensemble interplay, creating a record that is both accessible and richly musical.
Tippin' On Through showcases Amy’s robust tone, lyrical phrasing, and rhythmic agility. Across the program he moves effortlessly between blues‑inflect…
Components
Components documents vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s early emergence as a vital voice in modern jazz. Recorded and issued in 1965, the album presents Hutcherson’s distinctive mallet work and original compositions that bridge post‑bop lyricism and mid‑60s harmonic exploration.
Components balances melodic clarity with adventurous harmony, moving between contemplative ballads, driving post‑bop pieces, and modal excursions that highlight the vibraphone’s textural range within a small‑combo setting.
…
Be-Bop '82
*2026 stock* The title says it: a deliberate, joyful return to bebop fundamentals from the Kenji Mori quintet, recorded at a moment when the language could already feel like a stylistic choice rather than a default. By 1982 the Japanese jazz scene had moved through its modal, free and fusion phases, and Be-Bop '82 is in part a record about choosing to stand somewhere: a claim that the bebop vocabulary still had real things to say. Mori plays with the kind of warmth and confidence that comes from…
Gallery
*2026 stock* Toshiyuki Miyama led The New Herd for decades, one of the most important and most adventurous Japanese big bands of the post-war period, and the working ensemble through which a remarkable number of Japanese composers and arrangers found a sympathetic home. Gallery shows the band in mature form, working through a programme that uses the full resources of the ensemble: brass-heavy passages giving way to chamber-sized features, dense ensemble writing setting up patches of open improvi…
Sunday Thing
*2026 stock* Another date from Toshiyuki Miyama's New Herd for Three Blind Mice, and a strong candidate for the band's most accessible single record. Sunday Thing leans into the warmer, more groove-conscious end of the New Herd's repertoire: there are still the harmonic ambitions and ensemble dynamics that made the band more than a swing-era throwback, but the rhythmic feel runs closer to the soul-jazz and groove-oriented big-band writing that was current at the time.
Long-form arrangements give…
Mari Nakamoto III
*2026 stock* The third album from singer Mari Nakamoto for Three Blind Mice, and the one that pushes hardest at the conventions of mainstream vocal jazz. The line-up is the giveaway: alongside Nakamoto's voice, the record places bassist Isao Suzuki at the centre of the rhythm section and brings in Kazumi Watanabe on guitar, the same Watanabe who would shortly become one of the major figures in Japanese fusion and progressive jazz. The result is a vocal record where the accompaniment is unmistaka…
Now's The Time
*2026 stock* A live document from the legendary “5 Days In Jazz” festival in Tokyo in March 1974, and one of the most ambitious multi-band albums in the Three Blind Mice catalogue. The record gathers some of the most important working units of the moment: bassist Isao Suzuki and guitarist Sunao Wada sharing the front of the stage, the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio holding things together from the rhythm section, and the George Otsuka Quintet stepping in with the alto-led horn front-line that defined th…
Active Volcano
*2026 stock* Nobuo Hara led Sharps & Flats for an astonishing run, well over half a century, and the band became one of the institutions of Japanese jazz, in roughly the same way the Clarke-Boland Big Band held its place in Europe. Active Volcano catches the ensemble in particularly muscular form: arrangements that draw on the funkier, groove-conscious end of seventies big-band writing, brass passages that hit hard without losing definition, and a sense of swing that belongs less to the swing er…
Live In Montreux
*2026 stock* The Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio in concert at Montreux, and one of the relatively few records that documents the working group on an international stage. By the time of this recording the trio had already been together for years, and the band's mutual understanding shows in the way pieces unfold: long heads, patient solos, and a rhythm section that responds to the leader's harmonic choices before he has finished making them.
Yamamoto plays with the bluesy, slightly behind-the-beat phrasi…
The In Crowd
*2026 stock* A mid-seventies entry from the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio, and one of the records where the leader's bluesy, groove-conscious side comes most clearly to the front. The title track is the Ramsey Lewis standard, and the choice tells you most of what you need to know about the date: Yamamoto's trio was a working unit happy to engage with the soul-jazz and groove-jazz vocabularies that had been moving the music since the late sixties.
The rest of the programme balances that with the lyrical…
Duo Concert Frankfurt 1986
Duo Concert Frankfurt 1986 was recorded live in Germany on February 15th. The album captures tenor icon Pharoah Sanders and celebrated pianist John Hicks in a moment of profound musical harmony. Sanders, known for his evolution from fierce free-jazz to deeply lyrical spiritualist, plays here with warmth, focus and emotional clarity. Hicks meets him with luminous touch, rich voicings and an intuitive sense of space that elevates every phrase. Together they deliver a beautifully balanced set of Co…
Doway Do Doway Do !?!!
Australian progressive fusion-jazz-symphonic rock act Pantha burst from the mid‑1970s with a uniquely spirited record, Doway Do Doway Do !?!!, a thrilling hybrid of rock, jazz, Latin American rhythms, West Indian grooves and occasional Zappa‑styled eccentricity. Originally released in 1975, the album showcases the group’s deft ability to marry virtuosic musicianship with irresistible danceable energy.
Doway Do Doway Do !?!! draws on the Santana hallmark of driving rock over Latin beats but expan…
Go On
*2026 stock* Drummer George Otsuka was a fixture of the Tokyo jazz club scene from the sixties onwards, leading a series of working bands that earned a reputation for tight ensemble playing and consistently high temperature. 'Go On', one of the early releases on Three Blind Mice, captures the quintet at the moment when its hard bop foundation was beginning to stretch into something more searching: there's still plenty of swing, but the modal frames and freer improvising of the surrounding scene …
Encounter
*2026 stock* One of the more obscure entries in the early Three Blind Mice catalogue, and a record that points to the label's willingness, from very near its beginning, to host visiting players alongside the domestic scene. The American saxophonist Allan Praskin worked at the international margins of the jazz circuit, and Encounter finds him in a quartet setting that draws on the rhythmic discipline of the Japanese players around him.
The writing sits firmly in the post-bop tradition: modal fram…
Coco's Blues
*2026 stock* Guitarist Sunao Wada spent the seventies as one of the most consistently working figures in Japanese jazz, a player whose tone owed something to Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell but whose phrasing carried a particular Japanese weight, more thoughtful than driving. Coco's Blues, an early release on Three Blind Mice, alternates quartet and sextet formations across the programme, and the shift in scale gives the record a real architectural interest.
The smaller settings let Wada's line…
Firebird
*2026 stock* Saxophonist Kenji Mori belongs to the second generation of TBM regulars, a player whose work for the label spans several years and several formats, but whose quartet records have a particularly distilled quality. Firebird fits cleanly into the modal and post-bop tradition that defined the heart of the Three Blind Mice catalogue: heads with real melodic substance, harmonic openness that gives the soloists space without leaving them stranded, and a rhythm section that knows how to kee…
Gathering
*2026 stock* The pianist Fumio Karashima is best known internationally for his long association with Elvin Jones, having held the piano chair in Jones's working bands for years, a credit that already tells you most of what you need to know about his playing. Gathering, his trio date for Three Blind Mice, is the work of a player who has spent serious time on the bandstand with one of the most demanding drummers in jazz history, and the record's qualities reflect it: a strong rhythmic centre, a le…
Conversation
*2026 stock* One of the more intimate entries in the Three Blind Mice catalogue: a duo session, with all the exposure and concentrated focus the format implies. Conversation lives up to its title. Two players in close, careful dialogue, with neither voice dominating and neither retreating into accompaniment. The duo format strips a lot of the usual jazz furniture away: there's no rhythm section to lean on, no horn section to fill out the harmony, no place for either player to hide.
What's left i…
Four Scenes
*2026 stock* A later Sunao Wada session for Three Blind Mice, and one of the more outward-looking records in his TBM run. The quintet-plus-one format brings the saxophonist and flautist Minoru Ikeno alongside Wada's working group, and the addition shifts the music's centre of gravity, opening up the writing to longer tones and more spacious harmonies. There's still plenty of the bluesy swing that runs through Wada's discography, but the textures here are wider: Fender Rhodes lacing through the h…
Blues World
*2026 stock* An earlier Sunao Wada outing on Three Blind Mice, recorded with both quartet and quintet formations across the programme, and built (as the title suggests) around the blues. But this is blues in the broader, more searching sense the seventies were beginning to articulate: harmonic frames borrowed from soul and modal jazz alongside the standard 12-bar architecture, and an improvising attitude that's more interested in development than display.
Wada's guitar carries the writing with t…