Masayuki Takayanagi, Writings
by Andrea Aguzzi

Takayanagi Masayuki’s Archives on #neuguitars #blog #TakayanagiMasayuki

Takayanagi Masayuki’s Archives on #neuguitars #blog #TakayanagiMasayuki

Masayuki Takayanagi – Masayuki Takayanagi Archive 1 (archivemp3.com)

Bleak Bliss: Masayuki Takayanagi – Archive 1

Masayuki Takayanagi – Masayuki Takayanagi Archive 1 (2009, CD) – Discogs

New Direction Unit – Masayuki Takayanagi Archive 2 (2012, CD) – Discogs

The independent company Jinya Disc has long taken on the complex task of producing new record releases, drawing on the historical archive of Takayanagi Masayuki. A difficult task, it seems that Takayanagi scrupulously recorded his live recordings, leaving us a temporal legacy of numerous performances. As a good collector of his music I managed to recover two gems: Masayuki Takayanagi Archive 1, a box of 5 limited edition CDs, and the CD Masayuki Takayanagi Archive 2, both concerning the free form music generated by his ensemble New Direction Unit. Takayanagi’s discography is a corpus ermeticus in which it is difficult to enter. My lack of knowledge of the Japanese language certainly does not help and the reissues and new editions of hitherto unknown recordings alter a sequential temporal development. In addition, if musicians like Bailey and Rowe have always remained closely connected to a specific musical style, Takayanagi loved to range over the long haul, always crossing different styles in a very personal way. And, besides, he loved to change the musicians to play with. The Archive 1 cd box collects live recordings performed between 1977 and 1978. The line-up includes Akira Iijima and Masayuki Takayanagi on guitars, faithful Nobuyoshi Ino on double bass, Kenji Seyama and Hiroshi Yamazaki are behind the drums, Yoshiaki Fujikawa is on the reeds in the first four sets with Kenji Mori in fifth. A legendary box not only for collectors! Includes an insert with a history of Saburo Sugitani’s New Direction Unit (in Japanese) and an 8-page booklet with Japanese liner notes by Michiko Takayanagi, photos of memos written by Masayuki Takayanagi and a photo of Masayuki Takayanagi taken by Tatsuo Minami . It was released in June 2009, with a limited edition of 500 copies, of which the first 100, including mine, also had DVDs. Wonders of Japanese independent music.

This is the complete set:

Masayuki Takayanagi Archive I

(Jinya Disc, NDU-A101) (Japan) (5-CD set)

Disc 1 (B-14)

  1. Improvisation 1 (23:52)

  2. Improvisation 2 (16:52)

  3. Improvisation 3 (15:35)

  4. Improvisation 4 (19:07)

New Direction Unit: Masayuki Takayanagi: gut guitar (2, 3), electric guitar (1, 4) Yoshiaki Fujikawa: flute (3), clarinet (2), alto saxophone (4), soprano saxophone (1) Hiroshi Yamazaki: percussion (2-4) Akira Ijima: gut guitar (2, 3), electric guitar (1, 4). Recorded live at Another Situation first concert, Pulcinella, Shibuya, Tokyo, September 4, 1977

Disc 2 (B-15)

  1. Improvisation 1 (16:19)

  2. Improvisation 2 (13:16)

  3. Improvisation 3 (9:31)

  4. Improvisation 4 (14:13)

  5. Improvisation 5 [Mass Projection] (23:53)

New Direction Unit: Masayuki Takayanagi: gut guitar (1), electric guitar (2, 4, 5), Yoshiaki Fujikawa: flute (1), clarinet (4), alto saxophone (3, 5), soprano saxophone (2), Akira Ijima: gut guitar (1), electric guitar (2, 4, 5). Recorded live at New Direction Unit Regular Concert No. 35, Jean Jean, Shibuya, Tokyo, June 2, 1977

Disc 3 (B-16)

  1. Improvisaiton 1 (13:47)

  2. Improvisation 2 (11:43)

  3. Improvisation 3 (11:40)

  4. Improvisation 4 (9:59)

  5. Improvisaiton 5 [Mass Projection] (27:21)

New Direction Unit: Masayuki Takayanagi: gut guitar (2), electric guitar (1, 3, 5), Yoshiaki Fujikawa: flute (2), clarinet (3), alto saxophone (4, 5), soprano saxophone (1), Hiroshi Yamazaki: percussion (1-3, 5), Akira Ijima: gut guitar (2), electric guitar (1, 3, 5). Recorded live at New Direction Unit Regular Concert No. 36, Jean Jean, Shibuya, Tokyo, August 4, 1977

Disc 4 (B-17)

  1. Improvisaiton 1 [Gradually Projection] (39:02)

  2. Improvisation 2 [Mass Projection] (38:38)

New Direction Unit: Masayuki Takayanagi: gut guitar, electric guitar, Yoshiaki Fujikawa: flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, Hiroshi Yamazaki: percussion, Akira Ijima: gut guitar, electric guitar, Kenji Seyama: percussion. Recorded live at New Direction Unit Regular Concert No. 39, Jean Jean, Shibuya, Tokyo, February 10, 1978

Disc 5 (B-18)

  1. Improvisation 1 (19:40)

  2. Improvisation 2 (14:46)

  3. Improvisation 3 (12:36)

  4. Improvisation 4 [Mass Projection] (22:20)

New Direction Unit: Masayuki Takayanagi: gut guitar (2), electric guitar (1, 4), Kenji Mori: flute (1), bass clarinet (2), alto saxophone (4), Nobuyoshi Ino: bass (1, 2, 4), Hiroshi Yamazaki: percussion (1, 2, 4), drums (3), Akira Ijima: gut guitar (2), electric guitar (1, 4), Kenji Seyama: percussion (1, 2, 4). Recorded live at New Direction Unit Regular Concert No. 43, Jean Jean, Shibuya, Tokyo, October 6, 1978.

Archive 2 is a single cd, an integral recording of the second part of the concert recorded as vol.57 (played on September 24, 1984, in Shibuya Jean-Jean) with a new lineup change of the New Direction Unit. It is a performance in which Hiroshi Yamazaki participates as a percussionist and where Akira Ijima supports Takayanagi. Akira Ijima was a kind of high-ranking younger brother, a faithful disciple of Takayanagi. There are moments in which Iijima’s guitar, placed on the left channel, sounds as if in perfect symbiosis with the guitar of his teacher Takayanagi, placed on the right channel. Other times, however, Ijima seems to try to dismember Takayanagi’s guitar with a chainsaw or electric drill, or there are times when the two instruments speak in an unknown ancestral language, or when inhuman roars or screams are heard. Ijima is a strong personality musician, even though he is younger than Takayanagi, he demonstrates remarkable control of his guitar and a deep understanding of electronics, there are many moments where he seems to be beyond his own teacher. The struggle between the two guitars is brilliantly supported by Yamazaki’s percussion, which at times seems to move and direct them in space, managing to maintain a sense of tension even in the most minimal situations. The result is a musical wave that pushes a mass of sound in which pitch and rhythm are not clear. Even if you are not a longtime Takayanagi listener, or if you are not familiar with free improvisation, you cannot remain indifferent to the mysterious power that this music seems to evoke. This is probably the last performance of the New Direction Unit before the arrival of the new “Action Direct” form, in which Takayanagi deliberately came to destroy even the traditional style of playing the guitar. From this point of view, it is very interesting to note that the final form of the New Direction Unit was made with only two guitars, with the exception of the percussion, and the sound was constructed using the sound effects of magnetic tape. Archive 2 is a precious testimony of a moment of radical creative change in which the source of the Action Direct idea emerges. Also, there are some parts where the sound is distorted due to the recording level setting at the time of live recording, but when playing loud, the distorted part doesn’t really matter. The sound is strong enough to envelop you anyway.

In these six cd Takayanagi seems committed to avoiding any stable reference, supported by a conception of art as an adventure that constantly changes according to the different formations with which he is engaged. He seems to be attracted above all by the shock put in place by avant-garde experiences. His experience seems to suggest a radical rethinking of the classical notion of poetics, understood not as a set of constraining rules, but as a program developed by the artist, as a project for structuring the work, as a revealing document of specific creative intentions. and linguistics. Takayanagi seems to converge towards some typical instances of the avant-gardes: the predilection for violent fractures of common sense, the taste for provocation and non-conformism, the desire to make wanderings in the darkest regions of form, the desire to make a “clean slate” of what was built by the fathers, the love for the Neu in its absoluteness, extremism, movementism, the revolutionary, the fascination for the unfinished, the hermetic and the non-popular, a secret vocation for catastrophe. Takayanagi seems to be moving against the comfortable and alienated maintenance of historical continuity. He pursues fractures. He travels here and there, to explore territories that have never been beaten. He crosses borders. He pursues the unknown. He tries to anticipate the times, the course of events, to realize the future in the present. Scrupulous theoretician of an ‘avant’ being destined to be recognized only a posteriori, he tries to establish what will be valid tomorrow, disciplinedly placing himself at the service of a future he himself has already outlined. His is an optimistic and evolutionary vision of history, which thinks of art as an instrument of struggle and transformation of reality, as a means to effect a clear transformation of the rules that govern the system of communication, society and behavior. Takayanagi decides to transgress the canonical rules, without taking refuge behind reassuring protective belts: perspective, symmetry, proportion are systematically altered. Takayanagi prefers the strategy of the impure, he carries out raids in the world of noise, following games of centrifugal motions. What could have been the public reaction? Used to being reassured and reassured, still today the public comes across sound walls based on the apology of the eccentric, the hermetic, the unusual and the disharmonious. He is disoriented. Experimentalism and avant-garde coincide. The music of Takayanagi and his associates gives the impression of living in an open universe, questions the traditional ways of doing things, radically redefines the categories of beauty and harmony, decrees the triumph of imperfection. Takayanagi dismantles the existing paradigms and, not without radicalism and violence, institutes new codes, other conventions. Aware of the difficulty of grasping the public with a system of relationships of a new kind and regardless of the reactions of a still inexperienced public, Takayanagi deconstructs a consolidated grammar of forms by acting within it, accepts the crisis of the reality that surrounds him by elaborating a sort of permanent disorder project. Takayanagi expresses a happy paradox, the one told by Umberto Eco in the book Open Work: “While it is believed that the artistic avant-garde has no relationship with the community of other men among whom it lives, and it is believed that traditional art preserves it , in reality the opposite happens: perched on the extreme limit of communicability, the artistic avant-garde is the only one to maintain a meaningful relationship with the world in which it lives. ” But the avant-garde artist is still the victim of a perverse game. It produces models that, after being designed and built, in order to survive, are destined to be replaced by other models, in an all-out escape Takayanagi, maintaining his position of ‘prodigal son’ until the end, he manages to go beyond the simple charge initial rebelliousness, avoiding that his contents are emptied of meaning by imitators, by caricature, by smug exercise, by intelligent acrobatics transformed into liturgy, by neutralizing the original hazards.

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