Rokukai It's more of the same r&bish jazz from the pen of Donald Byrd and the production team of Larry and Fonce Mizell.

Individually, the material on this record is OK. Collectively, the songs have little spark. Of course the musicianship is outstanding, but there is little territory tread here that Byrd hadn't trode. The melodies aren't particularly memorable and there is a large amount of filler. Compared to Street Lady, Black Byrd, Places and Spaces, and even Caricatures this music is boring. The second side is dispensable--unless your dentist office wants it.

This is a two star record for me, but I'll bump it up half a star because "Think Twice" is an all time Byrd classic and another half a star because it's Donald Byrd teamed with the Mizell Brothers, the funkiest men in the room.

Sean Trane Well in a way, this album title could be prophetic of Byrd’s overall artistic metamorphosis and evolution. From a standard jazz of the 50’s & 60’s, he had jumped on the JR/F bandwagon a little later than most, but he probably peaked much higher with the fantastic Ethiopian Knights, who is one of the wildest albums of that genre. With SIT, we find ourselves a few years down the line, and Byrd chose to keep advancing and by late 74, he’d gone to a wide-spectrummed fusion that encompasses mainly-instrumental jazz-rock, funk, soul-jazz and a few more jazzy-related styles. Indeed if a good deal of the tracks have vocals, they’re generally not intrusive or over-abundant and mixed relatively low in the overall scheme.

The album doesn’t really have a defined musical directions other than being “jazz” in the wider meaning of the term, and in some weird announces the future 80’s stuff, but in a positive manner. Looking at the line-up of the album, you won’t find much jazz musos, the vast majority of the participants probably gravitating in the soul-funk realm and you can hear it also in the songwriting… in its huge majority being from keyboardist Larry Mizell. The songs hover between JR/F (the title track, Makin’ It), soft MOR/soul-funk pieces (Nation, Together and the atrociously over-sweetish RnR Again ), to a frankly funky-jazz as the excellent Think Twice and You Are the World and the mainly soft-jazz I Love The Girl.

While SIT comes nowhere close to Ethiopian Knights‘ excellence, it is definitely worthy of the fusuionhead’s attention, because among the soul-funk stuff are hidden a few JR/F gems that you wouldn’t want to miss on.