snazzy jazzy japanesey straveezy!

on first blush, listening to Takeshi Inomata's 1970 album Jazz Rock in Stravinsky reminded me of the time that a friend of a friend handed me his headphones so I could listen to a dubstep remix of "Bridges & Balloons." Thankfully Inomata's takes on "Petrushka" and "the Rite" aren't quite that tasteless, but it's still a weird and arguably futile mix we have on hand here - what keeps the album from being a total failure is that it's fecking hard to totally fock up these ficking ballets and it'll take more than shoehorned proto-disco beats and psych guitar to do so (one strange thing is that the version of "Petrushka" here is one I was unfamiliar with, with a totally different second half - maybe it's earlier?) and also, for my money, vintage jazz-rock and fusion is some of the most inherently agreeable music there is, so it's silly and unnecessary but far from unlistenable, even with a disappointing lack of improv and annoying fade-outs every couple of minute.