For the better part of the 50s and 60s, Masayuki Takayanagi was among Japan's best-respected jazz guitarists. But it wasn't until his experiments with tabletop guitar led him down the seductive path of sonic experimentation that he became the stuff of legend. “Ginparis” (literally translated as Silver Paris) was known as the chanson cafe in Tokyo, Ginza, and the performances often centred around chansons but eventually became the session venue for young jazz musicians. They left their mark on a record, Ginpari Session, with Masayuki Takayanagi on guitar, Masahiko Togashi on drums, Masaaki Kikuchi and Yosuke Yamashita on piano, Terumasa Hino on trumpets.

Legendary Japanese jazz guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi formed the New Directions trio in 1969, with Motoharu Yoshizawa on bass and cello and Yoshisaburo Toyozumi on percussion. Their first recordings together were published a year later on the original issue of this wonderful album. Takayanagi was prominent in the Japanese swing and bebop scenes from the 1950s onwards, but found a new lease of life in the uninhibited improv of New Directions, a platform he could use to divorce his playing not only from the conventional harmonics of jazz, but even the shackles of his own instrument, using violin bows and table-top guitars in the style of Keith Rowe…

Axis/Another Revolvable Thing is the second installment of Blank Forms’ archival reissues of the music of Japan’s eternal revolutionary Masayuki Takayanagi, following April is the cruellest month, a 1975 studio record by his New Direction Unit. Comprised of recordings of a September 5, 1975 concert by the New Direction Unit at Yasuda Seimei Hall in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, the two-part set showcases Takayanagi in deep pursuit of what he began calling “non-section music” after leaping beyond the confines of his prior descriptor “real jazz.”