Album info: VGMdb
Listening: YouTube (single video)
Info
I wasn’t planning on trying to track down W.I.N.S’s albums to listen to, but while I was adding their first one to VGMdb on account of it having an extended version of one of Operation Wolf’s tracks on it, I found a full upload on YouTube, so I guess I don’t have an excuse not to.
I listed the members before but since it’s more relevant on this post, W.I.N.S was a jazz-rock fusion band of Akira Wada (guitar), Akira Ishiguro (keyboard), Toshimi Nagai (bass), and Kozo Suganuma (drums). It seems that they were mostly active as a band that performed at clubs and various other venues and never actually released a studio album; both their self-titled album from 1995 and A Sound Lump from 2008 are compilations of live recordings from a few different shows. A plus side of this is that there are a bunch of videos of live performances of theirs on YouTube; Kozo Suganuma(‘s staff) uploaded them all and even has them in a handy playlist.
The album is very much live band jams: long songs, lots of soloing, and a little uncleanliness to the performances instead of everything being 100% tight. There’s no uniform style to the fusion here; there’s some bluesy funk and smoother fusion and Latin jazz and proggy stuff all in a jumble, clearly a case of them just doing whatever they felt was fun. Would I have preferred if the whole album was just stupid prog bullshit written specifically for me? Well sure, but that doesn’t mean the tracks that aren’t stupid prog bullshit aren’t bad, they’ve got some sick soloing in them too.
The proggiest contributor here wasn’t Akira Ishiguro but rather Toshimi Nagai, whom I know as a bassist who’s performed for/with some cool acts but whom I’ve never paid attention to as a composer before; I legitimately wasn’t even aware he had any composition credits at now until right now. He seems good, though!
Recommended tracks:
All selections arranged by W.I.N.S, except where noted.
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“WINDS” (Kozo Suganuma, arr. W.I.N.S & Hiroshi Takayama) was Suganuma’s one writing credit and is on the cheesier side of things
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“DELUSION AREA” (Toshimi Nagai) was my favorite of the Nagai contributions, I love the big twang at 4:50
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“IN SPIRITUAL ECHOES -yahhoo~!-” (Akira Ishiguro) is an extended cover of “Condition Red” from Operation Wolf, unfortunately it seems like this was the only cover from that game that they ever played
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