EMERGENCY!

Surprisingly, drummer Yasuhiro Yoshigaki's band, Emergency!—formed in 2001—never performed outside of Japan until this 2006 date in Denmark. The quartet, also featuring guitarists Otomo Yoshihide and Ryoichi Saito, plus bassist Hiroaki Mizutani, covers the jazz compass in the same manner as 1990s Downtown bands Rootless Cosmopolitans and Junk Genius; that is, they sometimes reimagine standards by Duke Ellington, Burt Bacharach, and Lennon/McCartney in an entirely new dialect. Fans of Otomo Yoshihide may be familiar with his reconfiguration of Eric Dolphy's classic recording, along with Yoshigaki, on Out To Lunch (Doubt Music, 2005), and their recent Trio+ covers of Ornette Coleman on Lonely Woman (Doubt Music, 2010) and Albert Ayler, with Bells (Doubt Music, 2010). Unlike some Downtown artists, the group's rocked-out two-guitar/bass/drums jazz is presented without pretension. These are not artists posing for sake of irony... from allaboutjazz "It delivers just the sort of power jazz you might expect from a group of this read more...