Osamu Matsumoto - "Wahoo" (Love Dog) 2002

The title captures cleverly the feel of this CD. “Wahoo” could  mean “Japanese style,” or “light breeze,” but more liberally interpreted, it could mean “harmony of styles,” as well. In English, “Wahoo!” is the sound made when someone is having a great time, an exclamation of pleasure or excitement. Osamu Matsumoto’s CD manages to capture all those feelings and pack them into an unusual, easygoing, and postmodern CD. His instrumentation is nearly impossible to identify (that’s good), drenched in creativity, and marches to its own beat. On the first cut, Matsumoto puts the thick beat into a march, with lots of his slippery trombone playing all over the top. On the second the vibraphone of Kumiko Takara asserts itself, as it does through most of the rest of the cuts. The vibraphone really vibrates, with a calm, meditative stance, over which, again Matsumoto slathers trombone juice. Cut #3 puts trombone on drums on trombone on drums, in a nicely overdubbed combo of melody and rhythm with percussionist Yasuhiro Yoshigaki. “Wahoo” then breaks the whole session open with a superb ostinato vibraphone beat under which rambles a funky bass line and nimble, African high-life drumming. Then, it’s off to a “noodling around” intro that kicks into a heavy rock beat. There’s all manner of differing directions going on in the midsection and somewhere up on top of all this excitement is Matsumoto’s synthesized reverb trombone (or something) or perhaps it’s an elephant’s mating call? It sounds cool, either way, and is needless to say, not your normal jazz instrumentation. The next song, “1963” cuts into a funky beat with a very cool vibe that moves into the “wahoo means fun” feeling. Then it’s back to an oriental scale melody before the solo close-out by Matsumoto. Whew! Exhausting, but hilariously cool. This set of songs is wildly innovative with a very hip and very exploratory sensibility. Matsumoto plays with a lot of bands around town, most notably with the Takeshi Shibuya Orchestra and Yosuke Yamashita, among others. This CD is a solid example of what he can do when he’s turned loose. A few weak moments appear here and there, and overall, more improvising on top of the dense rhythms would have been welcomed, but this is a highly original selection of tunes that captures the unique work of Japan’s forward-leaning jazz community.