Collaborators

COLLABORATORS

HAYAKAWA TAKEHARU. Bassist in Rustic Living and Television. Legend in the Japanese ‘New Jazz’ scene. Member of Umezu Kazutoke’s Kiki Band, Greening Project and Hayakawa’s. Works with avaant garde artists John Zorn and Satoko Fujii. When asked why he agreed to work in my projects, he answered: ‘Why not?’. Top bloke.

RONAN CHRIS MURPHY. American producer. Indie label owner. Works and collaborates with top dogs in the progressive rock world including King Crimson, Terry Bozzio and Anthony Curtis. Worked himself silly producing Rustic Living in 3 weeks. Loves Hindi film music. Loves making records. Loves musicians. ‘Will work for cider’, he says. Good egg.

YAGI NOBUO. Harmonica player. Credits include music for Cowboy Bebop and sessions for hundreds of Japanese Top-40 records. Can do things with the harp others can only dream. We played together at the Noro Club. Then he flew over for the Television sessions and blew me away again. Said he liked his food hot. But Japanese hot and Malaysian hot is different.

ANGELITA LI. Singer. Soulful, fiery, smooth, inventive and technically brilliant. Does jazz, bossa, latin and even my weird stuff. Laid down hundreds of tracks in the Television sessions simulating an entire choir. All in just two days with loads of ciggie breaks. Scary. Gorgeous as hell. One woman riot in the vocal booth. Loves hot food. Proper hot.

REN TAKADA. Multi-instrumentalist. Played pedal steel on Television. Also plays ukulele, steel guitar and mandolin. We get on like a house on fire. Same influences. Same loves. His folk legend father Wataru Takada once popped out to buy a packet of cigarette and didn’t come home for 3 weeks. ‘It wasn’t funny then. But it is now’, he laughed.

LEWIS PRAGASAM. Asian drumming legend. Leader of world fusion band Asia Beat. Plays with Jeff Berlin, Tony Levin and Bob James. I used to watch him as a teenager. Years laters, he asked if I needed a drummer. I told him he played too much. So he showed me how little he could play. I was stunned all over again. Jaw-droppingly awesome.

GREG LYONS. We used to play at the same club. He’d have the jazz nights and I the folk nights. In between, we’d hang out. He later music directed a few of my concerts. I asked him to remove all the 9ths and 13ths. He told me I was an imbecile. I called him a snob. We hung out some more and had a few drinks. The concerts were a success. Sax hero.