Hidefumi Toki Quartet - Toki (2024 Three Blind Mice 180g Vinyl LP)

Hidefumi Toki Quartet - Toki | Vinyl LP - 2024 Three Blind Mice Premium Reissue Collection (MHJL 324 / TBM-46, remastered and cut by Bernie Grundman, 180g pressing) 

• Deeply personal spiritual jazz from one of Japan’s foremost alto saxophonists, a guitar-led quartet with Kazumi Watanabe, Nobuyoshi Ino on bass and Steve Jackson on drums, recorded at Aoi Studio in Tokyo in 1975
• Two extended Toki originals alongside Ornette Coleman’s “Blues”, the Marvin Fisher standard “When Sunny Gets Blue” and the closing “Old Song Blues”, all played with a quiet intensity that draws comparisons to Coltrane’s later ballad work
• Three Blind Mice Premium Reissue Collection, limited edition 180g vinyl remastered and cut by Bernie Grundman in Hollywood, with 12-page booklet

Hidefumi Toki was born in 1950 and received classical training on clarinet in high school before moving to saxophone in college. He dropped out to play jazz full-time, and Toki, recorded on May 17, 1975, is the album that established his voice. The quartet has no piano. Kazumi Watanabe’s guitar fills the harmonic role, and the absence of a keyboard gives the music an openness that suits Toki’s playing. His tone is raspy and warm, gentle on the surface but with a spiritual depth that one Discogs reviewer placed squarely in the lineage of Coltrane. “Lullabye for the Girl” opens at over eleven minutes, the longest track, with Toki on alto building his solo slowly over Ino’s bass and Jackson’s brushes. Watanabe comps with restraint before taking a solo that shows why Three Blind Mice kept calling him back, his clean, precise lines a counterweight to Toki’s breathier phrasing. “Darkness” follows at ten minutes, the title earning itself: Toki switches between alto and soprano, and the mood darkens without ever becoming aggressive. The whole first side is about patience and letting the music arrive.

Side B opens with Ornette Coleman’s “Blues”, eight minutes where the Coleman influence is less about the free playing and more about the logic of the melody, Toki treating the piece as a composition to be explored rather than a vehicle for extended blowing. “When Sunny Gets Blue”, the Marvin Fisher and Jack Segal standard, is played as a ballad with Toki on soprano, and “Old Song Blues” closes the record with a return to the relaxed intensity of Side A. The rhythm section of Ino and Jackson holds the centre throughout, Ino’s bass particularly effective on the longer pieces where his walking lines give the soloists a steady frame to work against. Produced by Takeshi Fujii for Three Blind Mice (TBM-46), recorded and mixed by Yoshihiko Kannari at Aoi Studio with Masayoshi Okawa assisting.

This Premium Reissue Collection edition was remastered and cut by Bernie Grundman at his Hollywood mastering studio, pressed on 180g vinyl at Sony Music Solutions. Supervised by Koki Hanawa. Thick card sleeve with obi and two A5 inserts.