Seiichi Nakamura Quintet The Boss

The story of The Boss is the story of a lost recording. In March 1974, the jazz label Three Blind Mice organized a project entitled “5 days-in-jazz” in Tokyo's Nihon Toshi Center Hall. For five days in a row, recordings were made with Kunihiko Sugano, Kenji Mori & Hideo Ichikawa, Takashi Mizuhashi, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto & George Ohtuska and - Seichi Nakamura. While the LPs of the first four were released immediately afterwards and recognized internationally as masterpieces of jazz, the recording with Seichi Nakamura initially ended up behind closed doors. Shortly before that, Nakamura had his debut album First Contactpublished, with which one did not want to compete. The publication was postponed and then completely lost sight of.

At the turn of the year 2014, Tee Fujii, producer at TBM, set about cleaning up an old storage room. He found the three untouched analog tapes, sealed in a box on a shelf. The master tapes (2 tracks, 15 inches per second) are among the best live recordings on the label with exceptionally good musicians. Seiichi Nakamura (tenor saxophone), Shigeharu Mukai (trombone), Hiroshi Tamura (piano), Isoo Fukui (bass), Shinji Mori (drums) and guests include Yoshio Ohtomo (alto saxophone) and Kazumi Watanabe (guitar).

Combak boss Kazuo Kiuchi produced the HARMONIX Master Sound LP together with Shizuo Nomiyama; Tohru Kotetsu took care of the remastering and editing in the JVC Mastering Center on the XRCD analog mastering system using Harmonix tuning tools. The 180 g vinyl LP with 33 rpm appears in a gatefold cover and was pressed in Japan.

The sound does not correspond to the exorbitantly high level of the TBM studio productions, but the tapes, which were processed and cut into foils in the JVC Mastering Center in October 2017, can still be heard and convey the shimmering concert atmosphere perfectly. Our 180 gram Japan pressing was also absolutely flawless, and the gatefold cover offers plenty of English-language information about the musicians and the event at the time.

Matthias Böde, Stereo, issue 3/2018

Since the 180 gram compression is made of high quality vinyl and is almost noise-free, you can hardly resist the temptation to turn the volume up to live level.

Joachim Weis, MINT, issue 18, 2/2018

And who should buy the album now? Clearly: the jazz fan or collector who already has a lot and is looking for an alternative. This record is a tonal highlight anyway. I'm sitting across from a craft that is very well done from A to Z and beyond any doubt in this regard.

Claus Müller, analogue, issue 1/2018

Track-list:

Side A

1. Old Folks

2. Toppu -: A Gust

Side B

3. The Boss