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Stomu Yamash’ta, Steve Winwood & Michael Shrieve “Go” (1976)

This is the album through which Stomu Yamash’ta finally gained international recognition, not least because of Traffic’s Steve Winwood’s presence. Among the other stars are Michael Shrieve (ex-Santana and you can hear a bit of this influence at times on this album) and not mentioned on the album cover, Al DiMeola and Klaus Schulze.

Slowly rising from naught, first with space whispers, soon transformed into a beautiful melancholic symphonic movement, “Solitude” is a logical introduction to the first sung passage “Nature,” here Winwood’s voice is at it’s best. The first side is a succession of structured songs linked with instrumental passages, be they calm or more heroic/dramatic. While the strings can approach the cheesy, some of the songs can be Santana-esque (courtesy of DiMeola and Shrieve) with a funky touch (much more prominent a feature on next year’s Go Too album), the whole thing works quite well. The flipside gets even better, with the same spacey Schulze intro, later on a slightly dissonant movement including the orchestra and again later a wild funk track Time Is Here with the orchestra playing the rhythm.

Go is one outstanding album that should really be heard by everyone and certainly progheads around the world. —Sean

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