4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Collection of Rare Cuts, April 3, 2005
This review is from: Kyoto Jazz Crossbreed 2 (Audio CD)
I'm a big-time Kyoto Jazz Massive fan! What a ride it's been for Shuya and Yoshihiro Okino - and I have to include Hajime Yoshizawa to the mix since he's such a big part of their music. Over the past ten years they've put out some slammin' tracks, compilations, playlists, albums, remixes and E.P.s. The Crossbreed series, which has two volumes that I'm aware of, is a great collection of tunes and shows some of the inspiration of KJM's sound along with a tasty sampler of some of the other DJ's and artists in nu-jazz from all over the world.
I enjoyed volume two which was IMO far more of a broken beat affair. It started out smoothly with Domu feat Valerie Etienne on vocals with the cool "Sail Away". That's followed up with a Nuspirit Helsinki remix to "Que Domingo" - you can figure it to be just as jazzy as the lads remaking the cut. Touches of horns, nice beats, great sound. And then there's "Crossbreed" by Kyoto Jazz Massive as interpreted by Modaji. It was a great track on the first volume and is given a nice breath of fresh air on this one. With a nice electronic intro, fused with keys, this has an almost ambient feel for the first minute and a half. And the keys? On them in this track is Kaidi Tatham of "Bugz in the Attic" fame, so you definitely have some West London broken beat influences which are in full effect when the beat actually drops on it. Other stand-out tracks on this to me were the WaiWan Remix to "Some People", aFRO-mYSTIK's "Ifninte Rhythm" and of coure, "The In Samba" by Nicola Conte given the KJM treatment and Mr. Hermano's "Free as the Morning Sun", uncut. The Conte track was especially nice because this was the album the remake first debuted on - before the Remix project about a year later.
In the end, I liked this but it wasn't quite as strong as the first Crossbreed of 2000. There's another thing about this CD that'll get you; the amazing high PRICE! This and their numerous other imports all have a heavy price-tag because of their Japan import status. They're just very hard to find in the USA & usually Japan imports have bonus cuts so my best recommendation is if you have a friend that travels, ask them to look it up for you there. That said, I'd probably recommend this for the serious collecter only and not the casual fan. But if you still do and dig this be sure to check out KJM's other works; particularly "The View From Her Room" featuring Bebel Gilberto and "Spirit of the Sun" released on Compost Records. You may also like music by Jazztronic, Truby Trio, Jazzanova, Gilles Peterson, Nicola Conte, Towa Tei, Hajime Yoshizawa and the Bossa Tres... Jazz series.
ALSO - If you are a hard-core KJM fan, be on the look-out for 3 distinct cd's commemorating ten years of their music. One is titled "Tribute Tracks", the other "Exclusive Tracks" and finally, "Remixes". You can tell the difference because they will be in red, white and black covers, respectively (but not necessarily in that order).
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