Stomu Yamashta - Red Buddha & The Man From The East (CD)

2 original recordings on 1 CD:

- Stomu Yamash'ta's Red Buddha 1971)
- The Man From The East ( Orig. Soundtrack) 1973

The Man From The East Liner Notes
THE RED BUDDHA THEATRE

The Red Buddha Theatre was formed in Japan in 1971, after working there for some months they were brought to Europe for Summer '72 by Stomu Yamash'ta, the company's producer, director, composer; in July and August they were the sensation of the Avignon Festival. After a brief but successful visit to London's I.C.A. in August they returned to France to take up residency at the Carre Thorigny, a brand new theatre in Paris' oldest district, Marais. Their stay was eventually extended to January 1973 when the Company had to leave to commence a month at the Roundhouse in London. They play perpetually to packed houses and critical acclaim seems quite normal . . .

Stomu Yamash'ta is known to us as a virtuoso percussionist, a mime and musician in whose body music seems to flame, whose mind cries through the medium of his instruments: someone, as Henze put it, who makes visible the music of our time. Now he appears in a new role, as animator\author\composer directing the Red Buddha Theatre: 35 young Japanese actors, dancers and musicians, offering an uncommonly exhilarating, attractive, fascinating theatrepiece, The Man from the East.

TRACKLIST:
The man from the east:
Sunrise 2.50
My Little Friend 4.00
What a Way to Live in Modern Times 10.00
Mountain Pass 3.35
Mandala 11.35
Memory of Hiroshima 8.40

Red Buddha:
Red Buddha 15:17
As Expanding As 15:52

Review (Red Buddha):
Red Buddha is one of Stomu's earliest known recorded works.
Red Buddha is an astounding feast of hand-swept drums, iron plates, studio-enhanced will-o-the-wisps, arcane noisemakers, and various other devices - it is a percussive tour de force. This dense tribal stew conjures up the heartbeats of Far Eastern gods. As Expanding As begins as a mini-symphony of steel drums arising out of ether and joined by mingling chop blocks that begin to excite the atoms in the surrounding sound field.

In Red Buddha Stomu is a one-man rhythm machine, using delicate electronic processing and the vocabularies of multi-tracking to construct two large-scale percussive blow-fests. At least ten years ahead of its time on release, Red Buddha deserves its forward-thinking reputation.