Sleep Walker - Shuya Okino "United Legends" Replayed by Sleep Walker (2007)

Syuya Okino is (if anyone is not aware) one of the participants of the Japanese project Kyoto Jazz Massive, and also the owner of the Tokyo club "The Room", an excellent DJ and collector, organizer of large – scale music events (for the second year in Tokyo, the Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival is organized by him, which can easily compete with the best European counterparts in its line-up and scale), a novice writer (they almost finished a book about club jazz) and in General, an extremely versatile person and outstanding.
A year ago, the eldest of the two Okino brothers released his first solo album called "United Legends" – it was a collection of duets with vocalists and producers, among whom the names are all stars, you can say the highest light of the electronic-jazz community. There were also broken-beat heroes Dego (4 Hero), Mark de Clive-Lowe, Domu, members of Bugz In the Attic - Seiji and Afronaught, Phil Escher, the Da Lata team, and a whole set of luxury vocalists – American Vikter Duplaix, Swedish Japanese Yukimi Nagano, Josh Milan from the new York house project Blaze, Navasha Daya from the Afro-soul bigband Fertile Ground, Clara hill from Berlin's sonar Kollektiv, Carlin Anderson, who sang for brand new heavies and the Young Disciples, and some other equally remarkable characters. All these people are connected with Kyoto Jazz Massive by a long-standing friendship and they work together not for the first time. The album turned out to be very interesting and, most importantly, very different – from rocking downtempo to quite clubhouse, from a clockwork broken beat to abstract future-soul. What to say – each of the invited artists left their own bright mark on the album, the record turned out great, and Shuya once again demonstrated his outstanding talents as a producer.
Releasing remixes is a traditional story after the album was released, but then Shuya decided that it would be more interesting to go the way of the German team.:jazz and replay songs from "United Legends" in a jazz way. It didn't take long to find out who would do it: the Sleep Walker jazz Quartet are old friends and collaborators of Kyoto Jazz Massive. The result is a double album with six vocal versions on the first disc and six instrumental versions on the second. What Sleep Walker plays is club jazz, sometimes very danceable and at the same time extremely sustained and intelligent (this is probably their difference from the Japanese jazz hooligans Soil & Pimp Sessions, which are so popular now with the efforts of Giles Peterson in Europe). The most striking thing here, perhaps, is "Thank You", where the modal jazz of Sleep Walker appears in all its glory – the thick soul vocals of Navashi daiya, the rapid parts of pianist Hajime Yoshizawa, the saxophone of Masato Nakamura come to the fore, and at some point everything merges into one solid rocking groove – a brilliant composition.
Charmingly good thing is "Pieces of You", where the vocals are by Yukimi Nagano, and the original was made by Dego from 4 Hero. On" Beautiful Sadness", the pianist Hajime Yoshizawa appears in full glory again.
The final triumph of Sleep Walker is on the second, instrumental part of the album, where the Japanese jazz foursome unfolds in full. This disc can hardly be called club jazz, at least, it is unlikely to be possible to dance to it, although it is not easy to keep from rocking to the rhythm.
It is a pity that the album of treatments from Sleep Walker did not include perhaps the most beautiful thing from the original album – the downtemp diamond "What Would I Do Without You?", made by Shuya Okino with Mark de Clive-Lowe and American Vikter Duplaix. But the selected six songs are quite good. The Japanese are always on the horse, original and excellent.