Yoshi Wada's Singing in Unison captures something elemental: three male voices moving together with glacial majesty, creating a sound both ancient and utterly contemporary. Recorded live at The Kitchen on March 14th and 15th, 1978, these previously-unreleased performances feature vocalists Richard Hayman, Imani Smith, and Wada himself engaged in modal improvisations that achieve a timeless, ritualistic power. This isn't singing in the conventional sense—it's a sustained meditation, voices locked in purposeful unison, moving through modal terrain with the slow inevitability of tectonic plates shifting beneath the earth's surface.

Wada's earliest musical memories are of Zen Buddhist ritual chants in his native Japan, and those deep vocalizations echo throughout Singing in Unison. His intensive study with Indian master singer Pandit Pran Nath is equally evident in the careful attention to pitch, overtone, and sustained tone. Smith's Sufi background and Wada's interest in Eastern European vocal styles add further dimensions to what might seem like simple unison singing but reveals itself as remarkably complex and layered. Yet this is also music informed by Wada's involvement with Fluxus and the New York avant-garde community—the edgy atmosphere of 1970s New York City pervades these recordings, adding an unexpected hint of menace beneath the meditative surface.

Despite being purely vocal music, Singing in Unison shares DNA with the slow-moving heaviosity of Sunn O))) and other contemporary drone practitioners. This is massive, monumental sound built from the most fundamental human instrument: the voice. The 96kHz/24bit digital remastering reveals every nuance of the original recording, the slight variations in pitch and timbre that make the seemingly static actually teem with microtonal activity. Wada's own liner notes and cover art complete the package, making this CD edition—featuring the March 15th performance—an essential document of a singular artist working at the intersection of multiple traditions, creating something that belongs to none of them and all of them simultaneously.