Terumaso Hino Quintet - Hi-Nology

The date on this appears to be around the 1969-1970 mark and was Hino’s second or third record. While Hino’s music has always had strong Miles Davis influences through the years, this album seems more a tribute and perhaps since they shared a label Hino was pretty hip to what Miles was doing to music over this “Bitches Brew” transition period. The opening “Like Miles” is definitely an homage and a pretty decent one and it sets the tone for most of the rest of the album, hell even the titles like “Electric Zoo” and “Snake Hip” sound like they could have been Davis outtakes. It’s obviously not quite as strong an album as the master and it has a couple songs that throw back a little earlier to the hard bop eras, but if you’re a fan of electric Miles this will be a nobrainer.

Blo (Berkeley Laolu Odumosu) - Chapter One

Blo were a group of Nigerians creating rock music and with those variables I bet you could count on one hand how many there were in total. During the mid-70s they were still far behind the eightball in terms of musical progress and seemed to be influenced by psych, rock and funk influences from over the seas, reconstituting the influences to a rather naive degree. But there’s undeniably a charm to the proceedings because of this naivete. You’re likely to find their music described as Afrobeat which often seems to be the tag that follows around everything from that continent, but it could only be applied to this group on a song by song basis, the influences were primarily American here. As an album, this one is a little on the inconsistent side in terms of a flow, one song may be an old beat knockoff, the next some churning almost reggae-ish number, but it’s all just so alluring to hear underground music reach such territory.

Mosaik - No. 1  (Tom’s review here)

The Mosaik in question, one of several obscure European groups with the name, hails from Germany and like so many German jazzrock groups from MPS to Schneeball, Mosaik have a sort of unusual bent to them. On the surface you could describe them as a sort of spacey fusion group, almost close to progressive rock, with a great deal of pyrotechnic guitar playing, but overall it doesn’t resemble fusion in the way that implies. For one thing, it’s a very long album for the period, closing on 50 minutes and the major sense I get out of the music is all the room. The production’s pretty low end even for country and era and at times the vinyl noise subverts the music, but the atmosphere and vibe can’t be held back. The entirely actually reminds me what Italian’s Perigeo might have sounded like had they been a little more active with the notes. Definitely a pretty strong release, although I had a hard time not thinking of what it might have been like had they hired Volker Kriegel.