Sun’s Blessings is the sound of two generations of radical drummers meeting on equal ground. Recorded live on April 4, 1999 at Zippie Hall in Sapporo and only now seeing full release, the album documents Sunny Murray - architect of the Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler rhythm revolution - in duo with Japanese free‑jazz mainstay Sabu Toyozumi. The set is distilled into two long pieces, “Mischievous Saga” and “Brave Warriors”, each one an open‑ended exploration of what happens when the drum kit stops being “accompaniment” and becomes the entire band. No horns, no bass, no safety net: just skins, metal and wood, and the shared history of musicians who reshaped how time itself could move in improvised music.
Murray comes in with the language he spent the 1960s inventing - cymbal swells that smear barlines into weather systems, snare and tom figures that seem to skate ahead of and behind any fixed beat, a sense of pulse that’s more tidal than metronomic. Toyozumi, who has been a central figure in Japan’s free‑jazz and improvised‑music scenes since the early days, meets him with a palette that ranges from marching‑band crack to delicate, almost gamelan‑like colour, folding in the lessons of his work with players like Kaoru Abe and many others. On “Mischievous Saga” the two circle each other cautiously at first, trading small jabs and flourishes, then lock into passages of dense, tumbling overlap where it’s hard to tell whose drum is whose. Peaks of near‑chaos are followed by sudden drop‑outs, where a single cymbal shimmer or rim‑shot hangs in the air like a question.
“Brave Warriors” dives further into the metaphysical tug‑of‑war implied by its title. Here, the interplay takes on a ceremonial weight: rolling floor‑tom patterns, overlapping snare tattoos, splashes of ride and crash cymbals that feel like signals across a battlefield no one can see. Rather than battling for space, Murray and Toyozumi continually carve it out for one another, leaving pockets where the other can step forward, echoing motifs and textures as they appear. You can hear the elder drummer’s influence in the younger’s approach, but also the way Toyozumi’s more overt dynamic spikes and occasional use of Japanese rhythmic sensibilities feed fresh energy back into Murray’s already idiosyncratic flow. It’s a dialogue built not on trading solos, but on constantly rewriting the ground they stand on.
Issued by NoBusiness Records as a focused tribute to a partnership that only rarely made it onto tape, Sun’s Blessings arrives framed with the care the music deserves. The label’s notes highlight the historical significance of bringing together the drummer who “blew a new wind through jazz” with Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, and a percussionist who helped usher in Japan’s own free‑jazz dawn. The transfer from the original live recording preserves the grit and air of Zippie Hall - the resonance of the room, the overtones of two drum kits talking at once - while contemporary mastering brings out detail in the low toms and high cymbals that might have been buried in a rougher document.
For listeners, Sun’s Blessings is both an intense, sometimes overwhelming immersion in pure percussion and a surprisingly accessible entry point into Murray’s late work. Stripped of chordal instruments and horns, his innovations in time feel are laid bare, and Toyozumi’s presence turns the music into a call‑and‑response across continents and eras. It’s a reminder that free jazz’s revolutions didn’t just happen in front lines of saxophones, but in the way drummers like these two reconceived the very notion of a beat - something this album lets you feel in your chest as much as hear with your ears.
