Sky High

T-Square's "Sky High" achieves what great jazz fusion aspires to: it takes technical complexity and makes it feel inevitable, even joyful, as though this is simply how the music needed to go and the musicians are riding something larger than their individual choices. The production has a particular clarity — every element from Hiroyuki Noritake's drum patterns to Masahiro Andoh's guitar work to Mitsuru Sutoh's keyboard lines occupies its own sonic territory while contributing to a whole that rewards both close listening and peripheral hearing. Sutoh's synthesizer work is especially distinctive: the keyboard lines carry a brightness that suggests exactly the altitude and light the title promises, with runs that feel genuinely aerial rather than merely fast, as though the notes are actually moving through space rather than simply leaving a finger. There's a buoyancy to "Sky High" distinguishing it from heavier fusion approaches — this music wants to ascend, and it does, with apparent ease that conceals enormous technical demand from the musicians executing it. T-Square drew from American fusion's innovations, particularly Weather Report and Return to Forever, while developing harmonic and rhythmic approaches that felt distinctly Japanese in their precision and collective discipline. This is music for large sky and open movement — a highway through mountains with the windows down, an airplane window at sunset when the cloud layer is below you and the light is going amber, the particular elation of altitude that makes everything beneath seem both small and beautiful.