Guitarist Masayuki "Jojo" Takayanagi (1932-1991) was a towering leader in the Japanese jazz world. His first influence was Lennie Tristano, but through the 1960s and 1970s he explored and pushed the boundaries in free form jazz.
Takayanagi was invited to play with his group New Direction Unit at the 9th annual Moers New Jazz Festival in Germany in 1980, which, as the name suggests, featured only free jazz performances. In front of the 3,000 plus audience, Takayanagi and company had their most radical, fiery and avant-garde performance on record.
Their radical music did not exist in vacuum and was informed by the radical anti-establishment movements and political events. The German narration played over in the opening track ("Bohimei" means "epitaph") talks about Aikichi Kuboyama, a crew member of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a Japanese tuna fishing boat, who died after being exposed to the nuclear fallout from the United State's thermonuclear device test on Bikini Atoll in 1954. "Resistance 1" is inspired by Kim Chi-Ha, a Korean poet who was jailed for advocating democracy.

Produced by Takeshi Fujii. Recorded live at the Moers New Jazz Festival, in Moers, West Germany, on May 26, 1980. Blu-spec CD is compatible with all regular CD players. Paper sleeve special limited edition.