Latest (and final) volume of the long dormant J.I. Collection - PSF's groundbreaking collection of rare Japanese free jazz recordings from the early 1970s! Kaoru Abe was easily the brightest shooting star of the late sixties and early seventies Japanese free jazz scene, a wilful iconoclast who specialized in solo improvisations on alto sax and bass clarinet that seemed to slice and dice the air, glittering with a dangerously honed edge. Abe would burn himself out by the late seventies (he died in 1978) when most of his available recordings were made. To hear him at his best, you really need to go back to his solo live recordings from the first half of the seventies. This recently unearthed recording captures him at his peak, solo at the Pit Inn Tearoom in Shinjuku in 1973. Over three long, urgent tracks (including his take on the standard My Foolish Heart) Abe stretches out, attacking his phrases with a cuttingly sharp intensity one minute, before slipping into deep pools of melancholy the next. Still utterly peerless. Three tracks, 52 minutes. Jewelcase CD with obi and booklet. Japanese subtitle: Haruka na tabiji (The Long Road).