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Music Review: T-Square “Smile” Album

April 1, 2017

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This is my second T-Square album that I recently acquired. If you don’t know yet about T-Square Japan Super Band, they are one of the most famous Japan’s Fusion Jazz Band that has been around since 1978. They are one of my fav Japanese Fusion Jazz Bands (the other one is Casiopea). Both T-Square and Casiopea often held a music live show together. What I like about T-Square is the dynamic of their team, the richness of their style, and of course, the infamous EWI play by Takeshi Itoh. I believe without EWI, the current T-Square would not be the same. If you want to know more about the band, please refer to Wikipedia article about them.

About this album, frankly, what attracted me first is the unusual CD cover that has a cute dog and the “Smile” title. I thought what was this thing doing in the fusion jazz section. To my surprise, it is a T-Square full album! It’s true that this album was released on the summer of 2013 and to acquire it after many years have passed seems to be outdated. However, for big fans of T-Square, acquiring their albums for the first time feels like the album was just released yesterday.

From the 9 songs, I specifically love the first three songs:

Open The 35th Gate
Believe
Departure 10

The “Open The 35th Gate” has a very powerful opening and the EWI play throughout the song makes you feel like you are riding a fun train ride in the summer season. It will make your day feels brighter. “Believe” is an energetic and fast song. Followed by “Departure 10”, these 3 songs seem to be made to sustain that “euphoria” feeling for a good few minutes. This album is really a good compliment for the other T-Square album (“33”) which is still reign in my Top T-Square albums. From the back cover, I learned that T-Square was using Roland V-Synth (1.0/original) synthesizer, which is still recognized as a versatile synthesizer, despite it was released in 2003. The sounds that it produce was quite warm. I am looking forward for future addition of T-Square albums into my collection.