Motohiko Hino Quartet +1 featuring Mabumi Yamaguchi - Ryuhyo: Sailing Ice (2024 Three Blind Mice 180g Vinyl LP)

Motohiko Hino Quartet +1 featuring Mabumi Yamaguchi - Ryuhyo: Sailing Ice (流氷) | Vinyl LP - 2024 Three Blind Mice Premium Reissue Collection (MHJL 308, remastered and cut by Bernie Grundman, 180g pressing at Sony Music Solutions Shizuoka) 

• Recorded live in Nemuro, the easternmost city in Japan, on a February night in 1976 with drift ice on the Sea of Okhotsk, three extended post-Coltrane performances by two tenor saxophonists, a young Kazumi Watanabe on guitar and Nobuyoshi Ino on bass
• Three Blind Mice Premium Reissue Collection, limited edition 180g vinyl remastered and cut by Bernie Grundman in Hollywood from the original master tapes, with 12-page booklet
• Motohiko Hino's most celebrated recording, the drummer leading a quintet through pieces by Tadd Dameron and Steve Grossman alongside his own title composition, produced by TBM founder Takeshi Fujii

Ryuhyo means drift ice: the sea ice that flows south from the Sea of Okhotsk to the coast of Hokkaido each winter. Nemuro sits at the very eastern tip of the island, and this concert was recorded there on February 7, 1976 at the Nemuro Shimin Kaikan. The location is part of the album. Motohiko "Toko" Hino, younger brother of trumpeter Terumasa Hino, leads a quintet of two tenor saxophonists, guitar, bass and drums through three extended performances, none shorter than ten minutes. The title track opens Side A with Hino's own composition, a thirteen-minute piece where the two tenors (Mabumi Yamaguchi and Yasuaki Shimizu) establish a post-Coltrane intensity that Dusty Groove described as living up to the imagery of its title. Kazumi Watanabe, still in his early twenties and a few years away from international recognition, plays guitar with a clarity and aggression that cuts through the two horns. "Soultrane", Tadd Dameron's piece from Coltrane's 1958 album of the same name, follows at ten and a half minutes, the rhythm section of Hino and Nobuyoshi Ino providing the rhythmic foundation while the saxophone solos build.

"New Moon", Steve Grossman's composition, fills all of Side B at over eighteen minutes. It is the album's centrepiece and the most rhythmically complex piece on the date. Hino's drumming, always the session's driving force, is at its most expansive here, responding to the soloists in real time with a sensitivity and power that places him alongside the best post-bop drummers working anywhere in 1976. The recording was engineered by Masayoshi Okawa with assistance from Shigeru Kadowaki of the Nemuro Hot Jazz Club and Toshiaki Kanazawa of Suzuki Denki, and originally cut by Mitsuharu Kobayashi at Toshiba EMI. Produced by Takeshi Fujii for Three Blind Mice (TBM-61), the label he founded in 1970 as a showcase for Japan's jazz musicians, known across the audiophile world for its recording quality. 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 in Shizuoka. Comes with obi and 12-page booklet with liner notes by Shun-ichi Morita and Tateo Fujii.