Little Japanese guy, big drum set
Does anyone know who Akira Jimbo is? Or Casiopea? Of course not. Nor should you. But, I do. Why? Because I’m a musician, silly.
Akira Jimbo (神保 彰) is a jazz-fusion drummer from Japan. He played in a band called Casiopea in the 80s (with another superhuman named Tetsuo Sakurai). The band played music that would probably be considered “cheesy-sounding” to lay audiences today but the truth is they were incredibly proficient and technically capable performers. They typically played jazz-funk songs and wore horrible pastel muscle shirts and parachute pants (think OP [and if you get that reference think "I'm old"]).
Well, Akira eventually went solo and became famous for being a human machine. He is, quite simply, one of the greatest drummers alive. He is the closest you can get to metronomic perfection in a human being. You can go on YouTube and type in his name and see a myriad of examples. He pioneered the use of MIDI triggers on his set to allow him to perform a fully orchestrated one-man show. It’s quite revolutionary.
Being as I am a person who greatly appreciates statistical density in music, I am naturally a fan of Akira-san (or should I say sensei) and his music. Recently I cam across a video from, like, 92 or something that came from an obscure instructional video he released. It’s a performance of a song called “Aerobics of Alien” written and sequenced by a guy called Akira Ishiguro (石黒彰) who I believe went on to do some video game soundtracks or something. To me, it’s one of the coolest songs I’ve ever heard and I wanted to share it with you guys so that you can ostracize me for being a total Nintendo music dork. So here it is:
Tags: Akira Ishiguro, Akira Jimbo, Casiopea, Jazz, MIDI
I’m a drummer and I enjoy instructional videos, but I’ve never even consider the Akira Jimbo ones. I didn’t even know he was in a band, he’s just “the guy with the videos who plays songs you will never ever play”. To me anyway.
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Yeah, I think he’s like an android or something. There are some artists that simply don’t follow the normal rules. Akira here is one of them. He and guys like Allan Holdsworth, Hiromi Uehara, and Vic Wooten (to name a few) are just beyond limitation.
Oh, and I like your review list. I saw some Anitcon in there. Nice!
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