The gorgeous image of a stagecoach barreling down a mountain roadside, as if being watched by a crow perched in a fir tree, has great appeal to an imagination that begins listening the moment it beholds a record's cover. Unfortunately, the music inside this cover does not really correspond to what is evoked by that image.
Not quite so mysterious, or adventurous, this live recording, complete with polite audience applause and the pristine but cold high end of a digital room recording, is probably less satisfying than actually having been at the performance(s) that brought together Japanese improv psych shaman Keiji Haino and the German experimental chamber music outfit Zeitkratzer. The physicality of Keiji's input - his vocalizations and percussive noises - rescues Electronics (3) from the banality of the "noise" its liner notes make such a fuss about. Sometimes it's a bad idea to read the liner notes! Whether it's just very naive or, more annoyingly, a stab at self-important academic validation, the essay that accompanies this disc offers little to make Zeitkratzer's project any more exciting or "important". Some name-dropping - Levi-Strauss, Nietzsche, Bach, musique concrete, Carlyle, Dionysus, Susan McClary (?), Debussy, etc. - sprinkled amidst lines of academic jargon and just a bit of actual information about the "construction" of this music, and rehearsals behind this record (aren't there artists and bands spontaneously creating such 'noise' music all the time? Artists like Haino?) makes one wonder why they just didn't opt for a photo of the the ensemble's gig bags for the cover? Couldn't the liner notes have simply said that these musicians were stoked to jam with Haino, and really let their hair down??
Having said all that, liner notes aside, for any Haino fan, this may be worth the purchase just for the dramatic track 3 alone, the approximately 25-minute "Sinfonia", given the peaks of ecstatic beauty reached by Haino's noise-making therein... tracks 1 and 2, "Aria I" and "Aria II", are rather more typical of haunting, eerie-sounding 20th century classical, albeit with added extremity due to the Haino factor.
This is the third in a series of Zeitkratzer collaborations entitled Electronics, the other two featuring Carsten Nicolai and Terre Thaemlitz respectively, and thus this is the most "out there" of 'em all, being more about improvisation than composition, Haino himself (on guitar, Theremin, voice, drums...) the equal of the entire ensemble that's accompanying him (on tuba, trombone, clarinet, cello, drums, etc.).
And now that we're listening to the disc, rather than reading that cd booklet, we've gotta say we're also really digging the "bonus" track 4, a "Drum Duo" (presumably of Haino and one lucky Zeitkratzer member). Their freeform percussion blitz gets down to business without any of the highbrow posturing of the previous, larger scale pieces.
Here's one to play loud! The first new album from Japanese heavyweights Zeni Geva in six years (their last being 1995's "Freedom Bondage" on Alternative Tentacles), their ninth-ish disc overall (more if you count tapes and splits etc.), is out now on Neurosis' Neurot label. Zeni Geva mastermind KK Null takes a break from his solo ambient/electronics projects to return to his
9 new songs from KK Null and crew. Heavy as ever, but with the addition of keyboards, acoustic guitar and melodic (!) singing on a couple of songs.
Swans. Godflesh. Big Black. Melvins. Eyehategod. Unsane. Zeni Geva. We're concerned here with the latter, who maybe aren't as well known as the first half dozen bands mentioned, but sure as heck belong in that illustrious company... and sound VERY much like some unholy, heavier-than-thou hybrid of all of 'em!! It's been a long time since we've had a new Zeni Geva album to write about... and no this isn't actually a new album. But we're still pretty excited. Every once in a while, we have the opportunity to list and review an old favorite. Something that's been out of print for longer even than we've been doing the Aquarius website and New Arrivals emails, that we'd never had the chance to stock and recommend before, that finally at long last gets a well-deserved reissue and is cause for much celebration 'round here. For instance, to name a couple of recent examples, Harvey Milk's My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. And Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper. You'll note the examples we just cited are all on the "heavy" side... well that's 'cause what we're about to recommend here also pretty darn heavy. To say the least.
You may already be familiar with Japan's Zeni Geva, as they've been around for years and years. This cult "progressive hardcore" trio is the brainchild of guitarist Kazuyuki Kishino Null, also well-known for his "nullsonic" solo recordings. Definitely influenced by early Swans, KK Null started up the doomy and noisy ZG in about 1987. Previously he'd done time in Tokyo underground industrial noise-terrorists Absolut Null Punkt, and with prog act YBO2, which also featured drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, who of course later went on to lead the incredible Magmoid duo Ruins. Meanwhile, post-YBO2, Null formed the far more metallic* Zeni Geva. Null did draft Yoshida in to play drums on some early ZG material (wouldn't you?), and you'll here him here on about half of this disc's tracks, contributing his distinctive vocals as well to a couple songs. Ikuro Taketani (ex-Hanatarashi) plays drums on the other half. The lineup also includes Tabata Mitsuru (ex-Boredoms and Leningrad Blues Machine) on guitar. That's right, there's no bassist in Zeni Geva which is pretty incredible considering how hellishly heavy they are! And it's clear that ZG are something of a underground Japanese rock supergroup.
MMM was ZG's first cd release, coming out originally in 1990 on the UK's now long-gone Pathological label. It's a lumbering juggernaut fully blessed and bloated with everything we LOVE about Zeni Geva that would also be heard on later, Albini-produced releases like Total Castration and Desire For Agony: Utter headbanging, slo-mo, dirt-plowing destruction. Molasses thick riffs dripping from electric axes. Frenzied, technical bashing. Mathy post rock song structures. High-end guitar solo skree. Mean misanthropic attitude. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition.... adorned with the aforementioned guitar soloing, providing a crashing, crushing soundscape to underscore the throaty proclamations of "Sweetheart!" or "War Pig!" or "Blackout!" from gruff vocalist/guitarist Null -- the lyrics to these tracks being little more than the song title shouted over and over with fervent anguish. Glorious stuff, massive and mesmeric.
From the first track, the 16 minute harrowing dirge-stomp "Slam King" that ends terrifyingly with waves of unaccompanied, effected vocals, to the last, the rhythmic and witchy "On Suicide", featuring lyrics borrowed from Bertold Brecht, this is scary, monolithic, artistic heaviness of the highest order.
Let's give a big thanks to Cold Spring for making this classic available once again (as part of a wave of Japanese releases including a new disc from noise legends CCCC). Though we don't see why Cold Spring felt the need to replace the original, much more colorful, and in our opinion, superior artwork, we are happy to note that they did make one major improvement. While the eight songs on the original disc were inexplicably presented as one loooong track with no separate-song indexing (annoying!) they're thankfully corrected that. Now you can skip right to "Guystick Bodie", or put "Skullfuck" on repeat. And in addition to the eight original tracks, they've added three previously unreleased bonus cuts as well! Devastating live versions of album cuts "War Pig" (a Zeni Geva song, not Sabbath's "War Pigs" plural) and "Skullfuck", along with "Dead Car, Sun Crash" (an early ZG number not included on the album proper), recorded in Tokyo circa 1988-89. Whee! Like we said, we're so stoked to get to list/review/recommend this!
*Though not metallic enough to be accepted by the online metal authority Encyclopedia Metallum it must be noted...
Two weeks ago, we highlighted the reissue of Zeni Geva's Maximum Money Monster, which was the first cd from this ultra-heavy Japanese noise-rock-prog behemoth. In the process of reviewing Maximum Money Monster, we realized we'd never written up anything about this band's killer 1991 album Total Castration, the Albini-produced follow-up to MMM. It's our favorite ZG album, one that we always try to stock, it just predates the AQ list so it never got its due herein. It hasn't been reissued or anything, but we checked with our supplier and they said they still had about 150 copies of the original pressing still sitting and gathering dust in their warehouse, even though the Public Bath label is long defunct. Quite possibly a lot of the folks who snapped up the MMM reissue after reading about it last list don't actually also have this one either, so we figure it's our civic duty to highlight this old fave as well, while we can still get our hands on 'em!
Basically everything we said in the review of MMM applies to Total Castration as well, starting with the litany of crucial bands that ZG must be mentioned alongside: Swans. Godflesh. Big Black. Melvins. Eyehategod. Unsane... i.e. HEAVY (but not necessarily metal) and scary sounds. What else would you expect from an album with a title like Total Castration?! That's also the name of one of the songs, as are these: "Shoot Me With Your Blood", "Bloodsex", "I Hate You", and "Bigman Death". Cheery stuff, eh? Lyrics pretty much consist of these happy concepts being throatily chanted over and over. Oh and there's also "Godflesh", maybe a nod to sonic contemporaries Justin Broadrick and crew.
On each of these thunderous songs, the trio of trio of Null (guitar/vo), Tabata (guitar), and Eito (drums/metals) crash, smash, and bash, Null's guttural, nihilistic exclamations backed up by the iron fist of Zeni Geva's heavier than thou noise rockin'. The guitars chug and squall, the drums hammer down relentlessly. Screams and shrieks wail from the pounding shitstorm of metallic distortion that Zeni Geva have crafted into a throbbing, hypnotic riff-fest -- damn good riffs, with stretches of relatively restrained but still scary atmosphere now and then to heighten the impact when they eventually (as they always do) come down heavy. Meanwhile the high end guitar wielded by Tabata often unfurls intricate, catchy licks and squiggly solos over the top of all this mayhem, to make these songs even more brain-invading and body-shaking. And Steve Albini's production is killer, natch. (He would later play guitar with these guys on a live album, All Right, You Little Bastards!, that's now next to impossible to find.)
Super, super recommended to anyone into heaviness, metal or otherwise. As crucial as the Melvins' Bullhead, Neurosis' Enemy Of The Sun, Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper, Ruins' Stonehenge, Isis's Oceanic, Corrupted's Paso Inferior, Fudge Tunnel's Hate Songs In E Minor, Boris's Amplifier Worship... In other words, essential. If you missed this back in the early '90s, grab it. (By the way, Allan says the time he saw 'em on their US tour for this album was perhaps the best show he's ever been to.)
Ah, Zoffy. Times change, eh? Isn't it weird that the classic rock band responsible for such hoary hits as "Smoke On The Water", "21st Century Schizoid Man" and "Stairway To Heaven" would be playing at little clubs in Tokyo, Japan, and putting out limited edition cd-rs? Er, wait a sec. This isn't an example of the "still big in Japan" phenomenon. Turns out that Zoffy didn't write those songs at all! They're just a very tongue-in-cheek unit formed by members of Acid Mothers Temple (specifically, Kawabata Makoto and Tsuyama Atsushi), who play very krautrocky originals and a whole lotta classic rock covers in a loose, silly, folky, psychedelic style, using quite an assortment of acoustic and ethnic instrumentation. Tsuyama's underwater-sounding vocals on "Purple Haze" are a good example of the goofy fun they're having here with these '60s and '70s rock chestnuts. But when they're not yukking it up, this can be really beautiful too... a weird blend of laffs and serious psychedelic feeling. The material here was recorded live over the course of several years (1999-2003) and was first released in a 100 copies only cd-r edition, now it's on a real cd with 3 bonus tracks. Oh, and one unexpected cover choice bears mention, to Ruins fans anyway: "Hyderomastgroningem"! That one, definitely NOT a '70s radio staple...
*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert*
Here's one of them limited edition cds on the AMT's own label, this one the work of the band Zoffy, otherwise known as the duo of key AMT players Kawabata Makoto and Tsuyama Atsushi, armed with electric and acoustic guitars, bouzoukis, saz, violin, electric sitars, percussion, electronics, raygun (?), and more. Though the title is Thou Shalt Not Mess With Zoffy!!, Zoffy don't seem to mind messing with other people's music, with some or all of the lucky 13 tracks on here being deliberately fucked covers of songs like "Smoke On The Water" and "21st Century Schizoid Man". Utterly retarded, wrong, and noise-infused messes are made. But maybe that's the only way you could cover "Smoke On The Water" these days? Then again, there's always the option not to cover it at all... And although several other tracks here have ring-a-bell titles ("Hocus Pocus", "Heart Break Hotel", "Mysty Mountain Hop", "I Talk To The Wind") not all remain recognizable in any way when you hear 'em. It's just acid-psych-ethno-freakout-playtime for these guys, like Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Sun City Girls or Reynols huffing glue in the boys room at Classic Rock School. But persevere in listening, and all of Zoffy's wacky highjinx somehow add up to something more than just a joke. For instance, I really really like their take on the oft-covered "21st Century Schizoid Man" -- it's a new song all of a sudden, if you know what I mean. And elsewhere on here, the noisy bits subside and there's moments of real beauty.
Includes the infamous "Bad Hawkwind".
This is John Zorn and "Yamantaka" Eye, part of the Radical Jewish Culture series.
