This is an album which has more “What on earth were they thinking???” moments on it than anything else I’ve heard lately, but that’s certainly not to say it’s a bad album: indeed, I’d venture to say that any CD that kicks off with a track that sounds like Bill Evans sitting in with the Albert Ayler trio can’t be bad. Katayama is a player who seems to take an almost diabolical delight in musical bombast wherever he can find it, and Quatre contains wildly over-the-top takes on everything from Leonard Cohen to free jazz to tango to Edith Piaf, with the tenor player grotesquely wringing every note for the last ounce of emotion. The title-track sounds like Peter Brötzmann making a profoundly misguided effort to crack the disco market, while Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is a histrionic soul number that sounds like a parody of David Murray (I’d almost be willing to swear that Itabashi is guying D. D. Jackson’s fulsome piano stylings . . . ). The band approaches the music with a pummelling enthusiasm and verve, but there’s also delicacy in evidence here and there, and the CD ends with an unexpectedly heartfelt and restrained number, the soulful “Nairobi Star.” This is music simultaneously sublime and ridiculous, entertaining and irritating: even after several listens the disc still leaves me scratching my head, but heaven help me – I think I’m hooked. Do check it out.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, December 2002