In January 1972, Weather Report played five sold-out shows at Tokyo's Shibuya Philharmonic Hall. The performances were recorded by Columbia, and some edited songs were included on side two of I Sing the Body Electric. But it wasn’t until the release of Live in Tokyo that the full scope of those performances was revealed. This was relatively early in the group’s career, and the quintet was still very much in the mode of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, the two canonical works on which Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter played integral roles. Weather Report hadn't yet found the rock and funk edges that would propel their later '70s recordings. Live in Tokyo presents them as a jazz band, but a supernatural one. They were accustomed to leaving unnerving amounts of open space in the music, and some of the most captivating passages of this performance are when there's no other sound but a skittering bass note or a croaking emission from Zawinul’s keyboard. The group’s musical concept was the exploration of unknown space, and during this performance the listener often has the feeling of journeying through dark galaxies.