Tony Koba – Kageki – Radical & Musical
From Tony Koba – Rough & Smooth
Released on Better Days, Japan, 1981

Tony Koba is a Jazz-Fusion musician who plays the drum on various Japanese Jazz records in the late 1970’s – early 1980’s, but we won’t talk about him. The main interest of Kageki – Radical & Musical is that it’s produced by the weird cosmic Japanese dub master, Pecker ! If you’re into dub, you may know Pecker from his collaboration with Aston Barrett, Sly & Robbie on his amazing album Pecker Power. By the way, this album should have have been a collaboration with Bob Marley whom Pecker met when he was touring in Japan… For some reasons Bob Marley never sang on any Pecker‘s production, but sent his musicians to record with him.

The Japanese dub wizard has a very distinctive style, maybe as easily recognizable as Dennis Bovell‘s one : a very warm sound, cosmic echoes and a lot of SF sounds. On Kageki, Pecker offers us a very powerful example of his talent : sending pianos into space, using all kind of sounds as raw materials, he carefully builds a pure cosmic piece of fucked-up dub that turns into some Carnival trance ! Light a…, well you know what you have to do ? Right ?