Don't let the title fool you - there is no Gershwin here. Originally issued in 1978 by Flying Disk, But Not For Me finds Masabumi Kikuchi in New York at the head of an extraordinary percussion-laden sextet, working entirely through his own compositions and those of Gary Peacock - one of the most quietly radical Japanese jazz records of its decade. Long overshadowed by the pianist's later fame, it now returns to vinyl as part of Victor's Spin This Now! series, in a limited edition with obi and Japanese insert.
By 1978, Kikuchi - "Poo" to those around him - had already lived several musical lives. A product of the Tokyo scene of the 1960s, where he stood alongside Sadao Watanabe and Terumasa Hino at the center of Japanese jazz, he had relocated to New York earlier in the decade and drifted steadily into the orbit of Miles Davis - absorbing the modal openness, the electric ambiguity, the belief that rhythm itself could be the message. The band he assembled at Generation Sound Studios reads like a map of that world: Al Foster, Miles' own drummer, Badal Roy, the tabla player of On the Corner, the Brazilian percussionist Alyrio Lima, Azzedin Weston - son of Randy - on congas and bendir, and Peacock on bass, the beginning of a partnership that would culminate, years later, in the celebrated Tethered Moon trio with Paul Motian.
The music moves like weather. Three percussionists surround the trio, yet nothing is cluttered - tabla, berimbau, surdo, temple bells, and caxixi form a fine, shifting mist through which Kikuchi's piano appears and dissolves, spare modal phrases left hanging in the air, Peacock's bass tracing long, patient arcs beneath. Sunday Lunch opens the album at a loping, sun-warmed pace; the two parts of Peacock's Pumu pare the music down to pulse and breath; Circle Dance tightens into hypnotic rotation before A Leaf closes the record with nearly ten minutes of slow descent, as delicate as its title suggests. It is fusion only in the loosest sense - closer to a global chamber music, the percussion traditions of India, Brazil, and North Africa folded into post-bop's open harmony with remarkable lightness of touch.
Heard now, But Not For Me feels like a hidden hinge in Kikuchi's story - the point where the Tokyo modernist, the Miles disciple, and the meditative poet of the later solo recordings all briefly occupy the same body. Original Flying Disk copies have never been easy to find outside Japan. This first vinyl reissue since 1978 is the long awaited chance to set things right - an essential document from one of the great uncompromising figures of the music, finally back within reach.
