RED BUDDHA THEATRE: THE MAN FROM THE EAST

I write this as a preface to the review of Go (1976). I recently listened to Go Sessions 2-CD (including Go, the live album and Go Too) and this album, which music was made for a Japanese theatre production in 1972. I'm not surprised to see only two reviews on this one, but I'm most surprised of the fact that its rating was slightly higher than of Go's. For me it's obvious that whereas Go is at least a 4-star album, The Man from the East left me almost completely cold. I actually didn't even bother to listen to all the tracks til the end but used the skip button instead. (The more music I've heard in my life, the less I believe in the saying "it grows on you", ie. lerning to enjoy something I didn't enjoy at all in the first listen. But I believe this is one of those albums that NEEDS several listenings to get into - if you feel the need to get into it; I don't.) This is too avant-garde for my taste, not much of a melody for starters. I guess the music was very important part of the theatre production and worked powerfully, but for pure listening this is not, in my opinion.

The music is built on traditional Japanese sounds, though there are e.g. percussionist Morris Pert and Peter Robinson on electric piano involved. The music is mostly percussion-centred. My wife thought of a jungle as I played the CD. There wasn't, I suppose, any "ordinary" singing but some track featured something like tribal chant. The liner notes spoke of Hiroshima tragedy (the theme of the play?). So it's quite appropriate that the music isn't easy either. I did enjoy one track which had a beautiful sad melody and less percussion. Without that exception I would have rudely rated this one star (concerning my personal reception only), but two stars will be OK. This is not necessarily "poor" music in the objective sense, but at least for me it didn't work without the context.