Toshinori Kondo

A sonically bold Japanese trumpeter, Toshinori Kondo was a creative maverick whose conceptual music straddled avant-garde jazz, electro-industrial rock, and ambient improvisation. Kondo emerged as a key exponent of the experimental downtown New York scene of the 1970s and gained notoriety leading his IMA group and releasing ambitious albums like 1984's Taihen, 1986's Konton, and 1989's Kamikaze Blow, which found him blending metallic funk, jazz, DJ turntablism, and industrial grooves. He spent much of his life living in Amsterdam, where he was a member of saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's Die Like a Dog ensemble and collaborated with boundary-pushing artists like guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Han Bennink. Prior to his passing in 2020, his style softened as he explored more ambient, spiritual, and ecologically minded sounds, as reflected in records like 2002's Life Space Death with Laswell, 2014's solo electric trumpet album Deeply Dreamed, and 2020's Born of the Blue Planet.