Kaoru Abe - Mort À Credit

This 2xLP (and later, 2xCD) is one of the few Kaoru Abe albums to have been published during his lifetime. It contains solo sax improvisation recorded in October 1975, with one track of solo bass clarinet, in what appears to be a change in his style. Toned down from the full-bore chaotic note-flurry of his previous albums, "Mort a Credit" contains looser and more spacious music in a mostly high register, with bizarre shifts in microphone placement (though Abe might simply be moving towards and away from the stationary mic). There are long chasms of heavy silence, punctuated by machine-gun squeak. While it isn't generally regarded as his best recording (for those, listen to any of the posthumous live albums released by PSF and collected in a box set by Youth Inc.), "Mort a Credit" definitely makes clear the path from Abe to contemporary players Masayoshi Urabe and Tamio Shiraishi.

disc 1
disc 2