After his second free music ensemble, Taj Mahal Travellers, disbanded, Takehisa Kosugi formed East Bionic Symphonia with some of his music students. As a classroom project, then, Recorded Live is a pretty staggering achievement. It’s a spacey, mesmerising trip, made all the more compelling for its being a formative experience for a number of artists who’d go on to be significant in the Japanese underground: Chie Mukai (of folk group Ché-SHIZU), guitar improviser Kazuo Imai, percussionist and keyboardist Masami Tada (of GAP and Marginal Consort), the late Yasushi Ozawa (once the bass player for Keiji Haino’s Fushitusha), are all present here. It may seem slight at first, but give Recorded Live the time it deserves, and it becomes an expansive, riveting listen, with simple sound encounters placed in a line, adjacent to each other, in near-perfect consort.

– Jon Dale