A glorious spaced out druggy FX drenched sonic trip to the outer reaches of the galaxy from the aRCHIVE label (Nadja, Goslings, Astral Traveling Unity, Alasehir, Jack Rose, Khanate, Keiji Haino, LSD-March, Growing, Bardo Pond). The perpetrator of said sonic space trip is Hiroshi Hasagawa, who spends most of his time doing similarly druggy business in C.C.C.C. and Astral Traveling Unity, on synth and ring modulator, and Keichi Miyashita (from Mandog) on guitar and tape echo. Needless to say, everyone who bought that ATU on aRCHIVE is definitely gonna want this....�
Three extended improvised freaked out ultra mega blown out drifting space jams. Swirling clouds of whoosh and bleep and bloop and shimmer and schhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwooooooooooooooooossssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh. Peppered with glistening sonic sparkles, a sky full of blinking twinkling melodic shards. Very laid back and meditative at times, a pulsing throbbing hypnotic krautrock like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh, but occasionally exploding into full on blistering acid fried psychedelic chaos. If you loved that Astral Traveling Unity, or Space Machine, or the above mentioned krautrockers or Acid Mothers Temple at their most unhinged and free (one�track even features AMT's Hiroshi Higashi on extra synth) then this will surely hit the spot.�
Like�all aRCHIVE releases, beautifully packaged, this time a glossy psychedelic 6 panel fold out sleeve with the cd affixed to the inside.�
LIMITED TO 600 COPIES and probably already almost out of print...
Ok, hopefully all of you into dooooooooooooooooom have heeded our recommendations in the past ("best band EVER" we may have said, in a moment of infatuation) and are already well acquainted with this cult Japanese band who exude a magnificently miserable mixture of slow, atmospheric doominess and crusty black metal thrashing, inspired by the likes of Celtic Frost/Hellhammer (natch), Amebix, and Corrupted. This is their 2nd full-length studio album, following 2004's Gloomy Lights debut and last year's The Dawn Of Gallhammer demos n' live cd+dvd collection. That's the one where we busted out the Simpsons Comic Book Guy impersonation in our review, but it's this album that really seals the deal, when it comes to Gallhammer's position in the pantheon of most depressive doom bands ever, anyway. They're up there, no doubt about it, as is proved by this collection of ten tracks, each one of 'em often (but not always) a slow-motion trudge through the depths of emotional bleakness in the form of monotonously massive low-end guitar riffage, wretched cookie monster screams, and simple, gloomy melodies. Several of the song titles are quite indicative of their sound: "Long Scary Dream", "SLOG", "Ripper In The Gloom"... Many of these varied tracks feature a dynamic combination of knock-you-over-with-a-feather soft n' sad prettiness setting you up for some smash-you-with-a-hammer heaviness, or even manage both at the same time. It's the former element, this band's almost post-rock instrumental mesmeric moodiness, for which we think Gallhammer should be best noted. Not that it has any of post-rock's usual complexity, this is raw and primal and ritualistic, perfectly encapsulated by the way the stark, repetitive slowcore acoustic guitar part at the start of "Ripper In The Gloom" suddenly, shockingly gives way to a full-on punk rock assault.
It also seems possible that Gallhammer, along with their interest in underground '80s doom-crust, also shares some of the Velvet Underground fixation displayed by their contemporaries from the Japanese psych-rock scene, like LSD-march and Doodles. Heck, track one, the nearly eight minute "At The Onset Of The Age Of Despair" seems to have echoes of VU's "Venus In Furs"... If one of Gallhammer's songs wound up on a PSF Tokyo Flashback comp someday we'd be surprised, yes, but only a little. Though it sure wouldn't be a track like "Killed By The Queen" or "Blind My Eyes", two of the punked out, filthy metal blitzes on here, the latter of which throws in some uncharacteristic Melt-Banana style yelping, dogwhistle vocals along with the usual guttural grunting and growling.
Hey, we made it all the way to the end of this review without mentioning Gallhammer's major non-musical selling point... we said they're a "cult" band above, but were tempted to say "cute", as this trio just happen to all be attractive young Japanese ladies, their looks further enhanced by the tasteful application of gothy corpsepaint makeup. No this fact doesn't make Gallhammer's music sound any better (or worse) but it's, um, interesting. Happily, though, Peaceville isn't using Gallhammer's sex appeal to sell this album, there's not even any pictures of the band at all included in the classy-lookin' white-and-silver digipack. Recommended nonetheless!
This ultra kvlt (and, we must admit, quite kvte!) all-girl Japanese band who play the blackened "metal of death" in a most dirgey and crusty stylee, inspired by (no duh) '80s death/doom pioneers Hellhammer, have returned after 4 years with a new album - titled with some finality The End, though let's hope it ain't. If you're an AQ customer with a pulse, at all into the doomy and dank, you're probably already a Gallhammer fan and are 'adding to cart' as we speak. If at all hesitant, the abysmal buzz and clank of going nowhere not so fast opener "The End" ought to convince you! With that title track out of the way, the Gallhammer gals (now the duo of bassist/vocalist Vivian Slaughter & drummer Risa Reaper, former guitarist Mika Penetrator having left after 2007's Ill Innocence) pick up the pace a bit on the next even more brutal number "Rubbish CG202" (one of several weird, partly numeric song titles on the album, btw), and vary between a flashing stroboscopic throb and molasses creepy crawl throughout this disc, the rhythms more a function of fluctuation in the overlaying distortion field than anything else. The vokills vary too, from rasping guttural anguish to some disturbing yelps (on "Aberration") and even almost actual singing (on "Sober").
The truth is, Gallhammer aren't really so much a metal band, as they are purveyors of nihilistic noise rock, having as much or more in common with the likes of Kevin Drumm, Wolf Eyes, Prurient, Sister Iodine, Aufgehoben No Process, Brainbombs, etc. as they do with the aforementioned Hellhammer, and other old school metal/punk artists whose T-shirts they're often seen wearing, like Amebix. The final cut, the ten+ minute "108=7/T-NA" is perhaps the weirdest, most WTF?, featuring some frightening saxophone textures, played by Ms. Slaughter... but don't worry, this is neither smooth nor jazz!! Just more grinding terror, the end of The End going to the utter extreme of experimental yet primitive doomdrone metal. Damn. We're falling in love with Gallhammer all over again.
A couple years ago, all the Boris / Corrupted / Eyehategod / Zeni Geva fans here at AQ were pleased to discover the debut cd from this band Garadama, released on the Osaka based, eclectic noise/psych label Alchemy. Super heavy riffage, distorted fuzzed out walls of DOOOOM guitar, crashing into your brain with the force of a frantic fiend (as per their song "A Fiend Is Living In My Brain"). Great stuff for everyone into the HEAVY (and no surprise, seeing as how the band featured the former singer/guitarist from the very Sabbatherian outfit Subvert Blaze). So, we've been waiting, and had begun to wonder what had happened to them. Well, suddenly and thankfully, we've got import copies of their brand new second album, as you can tell by the title. Again it's an onslaught of monster dirge crunch distorto sludge, swinging from Sabbathy groove to spooky, droning ambience... plus a dose of that special Japanese weirdness we love. Tracks like "Dogma" parts 1 and 2 are ultra-spooky and almost black metal, while the band display their rockin' side on the likes of the riffy "Who Does Try To Kill A Man?".
The album is not over-long, but their doom is deep, and we're sure Garadama would hold their own in any contest with countryfolk Green Machine and Boris... We should mention also that the nasally strangled doom vocals and the twistedness of their heaviness here reminds Andee of old faves Alice Donut! Recommended, doom fanatics.
Not remotely new (the catalog number for this is PSF-17, it was released some years ago) but something that we thought we'd get a few of and list 'cause we were doing an order with the PSF label in Tokyo and hadn't ever reviewed this cult classic before. Anyone into the speedfreak psychedelic acid punk of flagship PSF band High Rise (or Mainliner, or Musica Transonic, etc.) ought to check out Gaseneta, a Japanese combo from the late '70s who helped pioneer that sound (and were later covered by High Rise). This disc contains archival recordings mostly from 1978, all of 'em ultra distorted, in-the-red recordings of a band simply destroying, sonically wrecking the place. We mean, if you thought Boris kicked out the noisy jams on Pink... well this is a whole 'nother kettle of raw fish of course, way punker than Pink, but of potential interest to Boris fans wanting to check out their antecedents. There's eleven energetic tracks on Sooner Or Later, bursting with skronky guitar solos (Black Flag style) and the spittle of guttural vox, backed by urgent bashing rhythms. Four of 'em are live recordings, which are especially lo-fi but since you should be playing this LOUD anyway that just adds to the effect. Way cool.
Some of us at aQ have been going through a little bit of a Japanese crust phase, listening to lots of Lip Cream, Gloom, Confuse, GISM and of course Gauze, when what should show up but this lp reissue of both of Gauze's first two records, their 1984 debut 12" ep Fuckheads, and the 1986 follow up Equalizing Distort. Both brimming with furious chaotic metallic crust punk fury, grinding buzzing guitars, strange flanged riffage, all sorts of sound effects, seriously fucked up almost experimental production, wild tribal drumming, yelped vox, thick super distorted bass, weird squiggly atonal leads, all wound into churning, pounding blasts of frantic hardcore mayhem, with shouted almost sing along choruses ("THRASH THRASH THRASH") and some downright poppiness popping up here and there. But for the most part, this is some fierce as fuck frenzied Japanese hardcore crust punk genius, that sounds just as good now as it did nearly three decades ago!!
Includes a two sided 12" x 12" insert, photos on one side, a lyric sheer, in both English and Japanese on the other.
Another one of the Japrocksampler's Top 50 makes it to cd, this reissue via the same label who brought us Melting Glass Box a little while back. Unlike the more gentle folk-psych of MGB, power trio Gedo were counter-cultural hard rockers, beloved of bikers. As aficionados of both '70s heaviness and Japanese psych, we've been curious to hear 'em for a long time, never finding a complete album reissued until now. This, their 1973 debut, is a live record that finds 'em kicking out the jams in front of an appreciative festival audience, with all their clapping, cheering and laughter kept intact, none of it edited out. In fact, tracks 4 and 11 are ALL applause. How'd they get the crowd so excited? Well, Gedo mainly deal in an energetic brand of hectic hard rock action, with a few surprising mellow, melodic, melancholic detours (such as track 12, "Tender Betrayal"). They're sort of a Japanese mixture, maybe, of Steppenwolf and the Pink Fairies, some Eddie Cochran too, Gedo keeping it simple stupid, with a clear '50s rock n' roll lineage (which you can hear most overtly on the excellently-titled track "Rock 'n' Roll Stupid"). With big distorted riffs, raucous vocals, and even the sound of revving motorcycle engines (comprising the album's final track, as Gedo perhaps leaving the stage to go and recreate the cover of the first Flower Travellin Band album), this is proto-metal and/or proto-punk (we could imagine kids pogoing to a lot of this). Definitely "proto", as in raw.
Not understanding the Japanese language, let alone being a participant in the counterculture scene within which Gedo flourished, means you're not gonna "get" some of this. On the other hand, "getting" Gedo on such frantic tracks as "Scent" is not an issue!
This limited edition digipack reish comes with helpful liner notes in English, revealing that Gedo once upon a time not only jammed with members of Mountain and the New York Dolls, but also even played a concert with the cast of (the stage production of?) the Rocky Horror Picture Show!
With the sheer number of releases coming from the Kawabata Makoto / Acid Mothers Temple camp, we tend to get a little jaded. But the fact remains that if any of these discs was presented to us as being by a new band, we'd be pretty excited. Such is the case with this one, which IS a new band that we're not familiar with -- an Italian psych/pop outfit with the odd name of Jennifer Gentle -- simply teaming up with hairy Japanese acid guitar guru Kawabata for a fine display of out-there instrumental interaction. Recorded live this past year, this disc includes Kawabata-added versions of two JG songs, both sprawling 12 and 14 minute long psych epics w/ guitars, keys, electronic effects, drums, and bass all over the place. Between these two tracks you get six or so minutes of Kawabata scraping and droning away solo at his Indian sarongi, a nice if eerie respite from the energetic electric Pipes of Pan rituals he enacts with the Jennifer Gentle people. A collaboration not to be overlooked by AMT fans, or anyone into heavy, claustrophobic freakout jams of almost occult power. Now we're really curious to hear JG's prior recordings, if any!
Vomit shit ha ha ha!
BEFORE YOUR READ THIS REVIEW, BE AWARE WE ONLY HAVE TWO COPIES. WE WILL NEVER GET MORE. BUT I REALLY LIKE IT AND WANTED TO GIVE MAILORDERS CUSTOMERS A CHANCE. SO FIRST TWO CUSTOMERS THAT ORDER IT GET IT. SORRY. AND ODDLY ENOUGH, I ALREADY HAVE A FEELING I
Anyway, album number 132 (or something close to that) from Japanese noise musician / sound artist / professional masturbator Juntaro Yamanouchi. Gerogerigegege (loosely translated as vomit, diarhhea, ha ha ha) has gone through all sorts of sonic incarnations, noisy splatter punk, bombastic japanoise, experimental musique concrete, with some of those incarnations featuring the added bonus of Juntaro's trademark live and mic-ed masturbating. On 'None Friendly' (actually recorded in 1987), he tackles THE DRONE and it's quite a listen. Deep and sonorous, lush and mesmerising. I was convinced it was a synthesizer until I noticed on the sleeve, that it specifically points out that there was 'No synthesizer used.' So what the sound source actually is remains a mystery. Maybe it -is- processed masturbating. I mean, I hope it is. But either way, this is a fantastic record. One extended buzzing and humming, slowly developing hypnotic drone. Really great.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Of all the (in)famous Japanese noise bands, The Gerogerigegege might be the most extreme and unusual. Always super difficult, whether indulging in hardcore spazzrock or destroying piles of 45s in a concept-art conflagration, The Gerogerigegege are also notable for the often audible presence of a middle-aged masturbating man! The recordings on this new cd date from 1992 to 1996, and the material here ranges from what sounds like field recordings in a karaoke bar to near-ambient piano improv to live electronic drones n' tones. Strangely mellow and subdued but nonetheless intriguing.
It seems Japanese psychedelic noiserock insanity in the tradition of the good ol' Boredoms is alive and well! We're talking crazy Boredoms back in the day, at their hyperdelic height, but NOISIER. This debut album from Japanese outfit Gezan (in English, that may mean Descending, which makes sense given a close look at the cover art), unleashed over there in 2012, now gets a domestic release via Important and we gotta say, hell yeah, 'cuz Gezan rulez! Don't just take it from us - Gezan has garnered adulatory cover-blurb endorsements from the likes of Merzbow, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) and Agata (Melt-Banana); and apparently Acid Mothers Temple guru Makato Kawabata was the one that brought 'em to the attention of Important, citing Gezan as his favorite live band in Japan. Seems like those guys all think of Gezan as nextgen torchbearers for the classic Japanoise surreal psych sound, and we're hearing it here, freshly intense and energized, dark and psychotic.
The buzzing distortodelic chaos of the aforementioned early Boredoms comes to mind right away, as leadoff track "Mishima To Kuchibeni" hoves into earshot, riding a headcaving Butthole Surfers sorta riff, warped and damaged, FX bubbling up everywhere. The in-the-red 'Tokyo Flashback' acid rock sound of psychedelic speed freak gangs like High Rise and Mainliner is obviously also deeply encoded in Gezan's DNA. And even harsher stuff, like Eye from the Boredoms' earlier noise unit Hanatarash, is touched upon here too - the industrial-strength devastation of "Kouchuu No Wakai", ferinstance, sounds like Merzbow meets Guitar Wolf! Meanwhile, the likes of "Kyoushin" channel the blackhole heaviness and lumbering, lurching feedback-drenched doomic riffery of such notorious Japanese psych-prog heavies as Zeni Geva, YBO2 and even Fushitsusha. Dang. Gezan do it all, in terms of freeform, unafraid, bold & bombastic freak flag flyin'. Never a dull moment.
You get glitched-out rhythmic cut-up shenanigans, organized screaming, spacey shoegaze warble, fractured blues, even some bleakly beautiful parts. There's often strange, sudden segues into cinematic samples, echoing whisper-voiced interludes, and distortion-bombed soundscapes. But these are structured songs, mind you, and as experimental and extended and distended as they are, there's eventual rock n' roll payoff, usually. Also, Gezan are capable of surprises all the way through to the end, treating us to the (mostly) melodic blissed out finale "Haru No Hiza", didn't see that one coming. Nice.
We've made a ton of references here to other Japanese bands - and should also mention some more, Gezan is likely also for fans of LSD-March, DMBQ, Omiode Hatoba, Up-Tight, and Boris (if they went totally nuts). But you don't have to be a Japanoise nerd to get into Gezan. Or at least, you don't have to know you're a Japanoise nerd, yet. Gezan's blown-out, blown-up brand of noisy psychedelic mayhem could and should appeal to lots of folks yet to delve into Gezan's overt antecedents. Just be into distorted, damaged, freaky, rocking WTF-ness and you'll dig this!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Japan's premier psych-folk outfit produces another amazing domestic 7". One song is from 1989; the other is from 1994, another version of a piece from the first record; said new recording sounds utterly fresh and rich and features a blazing, screeching guitar solo from White Heaven's Michio Kurihara.
Hallelujah! Ghost are back! Since Drag City's simultaneous release of their Snuff Box Immanence and Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet albums back in 1999, we hadn't heard hide nor hair of Japan's wonderful acid-folksters Ghost (unless you count their liason with Damon & Naomi). Indeed we'd begun to wonder what was up with Masaki Batoh, Michio Kurihara and crew -- we missed them! And in those four or five years, it seemed that fans of '70s inspired Japanese psychedelic music had switched their allegiance to the much more prolific Acid Mothers Temple camp led by Kawabata Makoto who emerged in the meantime. But we Ghost fans know that, as good as AMT can be, in the realm of cosmic communal Japanese hippy rock, there is no comparison. Ghost rule that particular hypnotic underworld. Depth, beauty, originality -- on all those counts they have it over AMT. Unlike the excessive pastiche of AMT, there's nothing tongue in cheek about Ghost. And as for quality control, well, you do the math.
So, needless to say, we were supremely excited to get this brand new Ghost album! The sun was sure 'tangging' the day this showed up. Word was that this might be Ghost's best album yet, and while we each have our favorites (mine's Lama Rabi Rabi, with their self-titled debut in close competition) this was immediately revealed as a contender. In short, it's freakin' great. Ghost explore some heavier, rockier, more prog-tastic directions in some of these songs, yet let their incomparable delicate psych-folk flow as well. Stirring guitar/drums workouts coexist with Batoh's fragile vocals and trembling sunshine melodies. And Terrascopic trainspotters will be interested to know that Ghost interpret songs by both Syd Barrett and the obscure '70s Dutch prog-rock act Earth & Fire, and make them completely their own. The album takes its name from the four-part, 25-minute suite that opens this disc, which ventures from lovely, hazy jazz-inflected jams to bombastic, utterly prog-rock flourishes complete with grandiose choirs. That alone is worth having waited four or five years for!
The follow-up to 2004's magnificent Hypnotic Underworld from Japanese communal psych vets Ghost is finally here! The heavy-prog moves of that album are still in evidence, as well as their perpetual penchant for otherworldly folk -- and, as well, on the nearly half-hour "Hemicyclic Anthelion", Ghost venture into the realm of what goes beyond mere prog to sound remarkably like avant-garde 20th century classical! Ghost are certainly an ambitious band, with talent to match. With the dark, abstract, droning vibes of "Hemicyclic Anthelion" hanging over the proceedings, In Stormy Nights proves to be, well, a dark and stormy album. Downright aggressive, even, are the trio of tracks that follow it in the middle of this disc.
True, In Stormy Nights starts placidly enough with "Motherly Bluster", classic Ghost style acid folk, Batoh's calm voice singing from some mystic plane of crosslegged bliss. But then, the aforementioned "Hemicyclic Anthelion" takes the stage -- literally, as this piece is apparently constructed from excerpts of live in-concert improvs, an electro-acoustic, slow-mo freakout that represents Ghost at their most out-there and experimental. Following that, it seems that Ghost have fallen to the Dark Side of the Force. Indeed, the ominous "Water Door Yellow Gate" actually reminds us a bit of the music from Star Wars (!), with martial drumming and majestic chant. "Gareki No Toshi" is noisier, with distorted vocals and suspense-film urgency. What's next? Something even more frightening -- a stirring cover of the song "Caledonia" by none other than cult ESP-label sixties psych-rock "tribe" Cromagnon!! Wow. Of all of Batoh & Co.'s various cover versions over the years (they've done songs by Syd Barrett, Pearls Before Swine, The Rolling Stones, and Earth & Fire, just to name ones we can think of right now) this has to be our favorite. Partially 'cause we'd never thought we'd hear a Cromagnon cover, partially 'cause it's such a great song, and partially 'cause Ghost do it so well, complete with bleating Celtic horn, black metallish vocal rasping, and swirling, droning, bellicose ambiance. For us, this penultimate track is the climax to the album, but Ghost provide a coda, "Grisaille" coming full circle back to the gentle balladry of "Motherly Bluster", the dark side having perhaps been vanquished... for now.
Gatefold vinyl or cd, the domestic full-length debut for the psychedelic sounds of Japan's answer to Can. "Who Found A Lost Rose In The Warship?"
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Japan's Ghost bless us with not one, but two new albums of their psychedelic "heavy chamber folk" sounds! Of the two, "Snuff Box..." rocks a bit more, even indulging in a Rolling Stones cover. The beautifully silvery-packaged Tune In... is their album of protest songs. Folkier and longer than "Snuff Box..." and featuring a Pearls Before Swine cover. Lovely, haunting, melodic.
Japan's Ghost bless us with not one, but two new albums of their psychedelic "heavy chamber folk" sounds! Of the two, "Snuff Box..." rocks a bit more, even indulging in a Rolling Stones cover. The beautifully silvery-packaged Tune In... is their album of protest songs. Folkier and longer than "Snuff Box..." and featuring a Pearls Before Swine cover. Lovely, haunting, melodic.
Fuzzed, flanged fusion fireballs, blowing shit up! Mentioned last list in our review of Gary Smith and Aufgehoben No Process's distorted death match "Magnetic Mountain", here's the Glass Cage cd: the instrumental improv trio of guitarist Smith, former Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper, and famed Japanese free jazz/rock percussionist Shoji Hano (you might know from collaborations with Keiji Haino, or his stint drumming with Nanjo Asahito's High Rise). The family tree that brought these three together must have some tangled roots indeed, but we're glad they found each other (actually, Smith and Hano have played together before, in a trio with Nanjo in fact, and presumably Hopper and Smith know each other from the UK avant-garde scene). The music they play is chaotic, but beautiful; noodly, but heavy (Hopper's thick fuzz bass sounds like that of the Ruins circa "Stonehenge"). Smith's "stereo" guitar veers wildly though the flak thrown about by the Hopper-Hano rhythm section. "Out" rock enthusiasts, like Nels Cline fans for instance, ought to investigate. Earplugs required.
*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert*
Spacey, swirling, not-un-heavy trip-out rock jamming from some dudes who really know how to do that sort of thing, since some of 'em are members of Japan's Acid Mothers Temple, including the bearded one himself, guitar guru Kawabata Makoto! Higashi Hiroshi from AMT is on hand as well on electronics. Hence the alert sounding from your computers loudspeakers right now (what, it's not working? well, you can read the alert above). The other three musicans (guitar, bass, drums) here all appear to come from another Japanese psych band called Mandog, who we weren't familiar with before but maybe should investigate! Together, this AMT-Mandog collab called Godman has conjured up two long tracks ("God>><><
Oh god my eyes, my eyes! Don't look at the cover (the head of Gong's Daevid Allen on a naked pregnant woman's body in stereo) or back cover (Acid Mothers Temple's Kawabata Makoto sitting on the toilet), just listen: it's the sound of '70s trippy hippy psych vets Gong getting it on with Japan's Acid Mothers Temple. Yep, white-haired pixie Daevid Allen and his current-day cohorts (that's our pal Josh Pollock playing guitar!) meet up with AMT's Kawabata and Cotton Casino for a rollercoaster musical love-in, the tracks incorporating everything from heavy riffing to George W. Bush samples to ravey dance grooves. It's goofy and freaky, with rapping/chanting vocals that will either charm you with their psychedelic nonsense lyrics or drive you utterly mad. I guess it had to happen. If you ever thought that AMT was too serious, or not indulgent enough, or should sound more like the Talking Heads, then this is for you!! Long time Gong fans should note that Gilli Smyth shows up on one track.
This cd managed to go temporarily out of print the same week we listed it not long ago, but now it's been re-pressed and it's here again, along with a brand-new, expensive (but limited to 225 copies) gatefold vinyl edition as well.
The strangely named Green Milk From The Planet Orange is a young Japanese band that perhaps figured they have what it takes to become the next Acid Mothers Temple or Ghost, and they could well be right! This is an impressive domestic debut from GMFTPO (who had a couple of other Japan-only, now out-of-print cd-r releases, a few tracks from which appear here in re-recorded form) and should definitely appeal to the whole Japanese psych lovin' crowd and maybe to yr average indie/post rockers as well, if they're open to a dose of '70s inspired experimentation: long proggy songs that are plenty weird and varied, both druggily spaced-out and/or noisy and heavy. Yeah, it's a spookily baroque trip, these guys stirring everything into their prog-pot from doleful trumpet to jazzy walking bass to wild psych-guitar soloing and pinging electronic effects. Equally capable of grandiose epic bombast and gentle, slow-paced vocal balladry, GMFTPO glory in proggy changes and this album should certainly be investigated by fans of Ghost's recent opus Hypnotic Underworld. Of course, the bands that GMFTPO would want to be compared with are undoubtedly their '70s prog-psych, and specifically krautrock, influences: Can, Faust, Agitation Free, Nektar... You can also hear a bunch of '60s west coast psych in there as well (I bet they probably own that Kak album for instance). Yet despite all the "retro" elements, Green Milk still sound young, even a little punk -- which they are, some of 'em being former members of stoner rock/grindcore outfit No Rest For The Dead. Though with GMFTPO they've set aside their metal/punk past, they still draw on it in sorta the same way as Guapo does. Kudos to Beta-Lactam Ring for bringing this our way...and also, after complaining about past Beta-Lactam Ring art/design, we have to give 'em some credit here, they did a nice job with this one. The disc comes housed in a beautiful digipak, with "distressed" graphics giving it the old '70s LP vibe. Real nice all around.
Japan's noise-junk / industrial project Grim began back in the early '80s, mostly as the one-man project of Jun Konagaya with occasional help from Tomosada Kuwabara and Yukio Nagoshi. All three had formed the politically charged noise-punk trio White Hospital in 1983, with that outfit being discontinued in favor of other means of expression. The project that Kuwabara and Nagoshi started was Vasilisk - a ritualistic, post-industrial project of much greater notoriety with Konagaya occasionally working in that ensemble as well. Grim went in an entirely different direction seeking the more violent and the more extreme forms of music making. Konagaya finds parallels in Japan obviously through Merzbow, Hijokaidan, and Dissecting Table (although Grim predates Dissecting Table by a couple of years), but also the classic industrial works of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Einsturzende Neubauten, and Whitehouse. In the mid-'80s, Grim issued three proper releases (two lps and a single) along with a handful of compilation tracks. This compilation features everything from those three releases plus a couple of the comp tracks; and we should mention that everything here is also found on the Vinyl-On-Demand 3lp boxset released a couple years ago. Yeah, the VOD box had slightly more material than found here, but that was crazy expensive, and is long out of print, meaning this is the only way to get a hold of this material for the time being. As for the contents of Grim's musical destruction, there's plenty of metal bashing, atonal synths, crude basslines, and blown-out, blister-pocked noise to accompany Konagaya's gargling-with-acid vocal discontent throughout. The rhythmic spines of Grim's noise tracks separate him from much of the freeform noise constructions from his fellow countrymen, although it's hard not to hear the Tetsuo The Ironman soundtrack emerging out of Grim's demolition music. This was the course of action for the first two Grim releases in 1986, but by 1987, Konagaya made a radical detour for into a bleak Japanese folk sensibility, akin to what David Tibet did with Current 93 around the same time. The songs are presumably still about war and death, although sung entirely in Japanese with a highly introspective whisper and quiet, gentile plucking on the acoustic guitar. The juxtaposition between the brutalist noise and the naive-folk stylings is quite disturbing, much more so than the C93 switch from the Crowleyan collages to the apocalyptic folk. When the noise returns at the end of this album, there is a very twisted logic that seems to become apparent... that this is just really dementedly fucked up. And of course, we dig it.
Ostensibly, this is a 'new' album from Grim, but in keeping with the obscurant aspect of Jun Konagaya's industrial noise & outsider folkmuzik agenda, there's no real way of knowing if he made this in 1986 or 2013. As we mentioned in our review of the Grim anthology Folk Songs For An Obscure Race (found elsewhere on this week's list), Konagaya's aesthetic alternates between noise-laden abjection and weirdly compelling Japanese folk songs, delicately performed for voice and guitar. The subject matter of all the Grim material - noise or otherwise - is presumably war and death. It would be hard to imagine those metal-bashed dirges with their bloodcurdled vocals to encapsulate the poetics of cherry blossoms in the spring time; so we'll take Konagawa at his word that the folk tunes maintain that interest in the bleaker aspects of the human condition. On Love Song, those folk songs are Spartanly performed on a small organ with gritty recordings of some sort of political speech laid over the somewhat sweet melody. The subject matter of the speech is unclear given that it's delivered in Japanese, but it has the same feel of any given power electronics appropriation of Nazi imagery. But these instances are few and far between on Love Song, for the most part, Konagaya bashes out industrial rhythms on junked slabs of metal with accompanying blown out synth-noise drones and impossibly corroded chunks of distortion. If anybody remembers the anarcho-industrialist outfit Missing Foundation who jubliantly smashed everything around them in the late '80s, Grim's Love Song is similar, but all the more septic and mutated. Or if anybody is longing for the days when Neubauten was actually threatening, Grim is neccessary listening. This lp comes housed in an oversized box, each featuring a handmade etching from Konagawa. Very limited stock on this one!!!
Not all that long ago, we got in what we thought could have been a new Grim album. That being the very unlovely Love Song album on the Japanese imprint Art Into Life, released in 2013. There was no information about when it may have been recorded; but the industrial nihilism for iron-fisted rhythms, eye-gouging noise, and those strangely saccharine organ drones which comprised the Grim aesthetic of the early '80s was wholly intact. It very well could have been that Love Song was a lost recording from back in the day, never released until Art Into Life dug them up. Regardless, we can safely report that Psycho Sun is in fact a new recording from Grim - the first since the mid-'80s (well, all of this is according to Steinklang Industries).
Grim is the nom de guerre for Jun Konagaya, an obscure pioneer of Japanese industrial music whose aesthetic slips outside the histories of Keiji Haino, Merzbow, Hanatarash / Boredoms, Incapacitants, etc. He began in late '70s as part of the equally volatile and even more obscure White Hospital (with Tomo Kuwahara later of Vasilisk), where the torturousness of Grim had incubated within a feral noise-junk crucible. Both in White Hospital and in the early incarnations of Grim, Konagaya would juxtapose these strangely ethereal, almost celebratory organ tunes with teeth-clenching pummel of metal-on-metal overdrive with throat-ripped vocalizations. This also defines what he's doing in the modern-day Grim, with a few minor tweaks - the organ tunes are augmented by detuned radiowaves bent through the electrically irradiated landscape of urban Japan, the metal bashing finds chunks of guitar noise to wrestle with at center stage, and the vocal range has deepened slightly. Despite these augmentations, Grim remains an uncompromisingly perverse project of brutality, violence, and nihilism.
Wow! This is a blast from the past. And we do mean blast (just listen!). Ground Zero was the crazy sampling + free jazz + noise rock outfit led by Japanese turntablist/guitarist Otomo Yoshihide. Hopefully you know 'em, they were right in there with Boredoms and Ruins and Omoide Hatoba and Altered States etc. for noisy underground Japanese avant-rock insanity back in the early '90s. Their now out of print, self-titled debut album from 1992 sounded something like John Zorn's Naked City, all chaotic jump cuts and skronking sax, and in fact featured the inimitable screaming vocal stylings of Eye Yamataka of the Boredoms, who also guested with Naked City. Eventually they turned into a drone-jazz behemoth, and also did a fantastic album of "standards". Since the dissolution of Ground Zero, there's been plenty more cool Otomo projects, from the Eric Dolphy tribute of his New Jazz Orchestra to his minimalist "onkyo" experiments in Filament and ISO to a variety of other interesting soundtracks and solo recordings... but the Ground Zero discs will always be a crucial swath of his discography. And a favorite of ours!
So, it's pretty exciting to get to hear this long-lost live show, from a old tape that Otomo recently rummaged out of his closet. The liner notes include this from him: "All I remember for sure was that it was a really good gig... The recording quality is terrible, but the recording, including that quality, really captures the atmosphere of the time." He's right, the sound is raw, but it suits the music perfectly. This is INTENSE. The lineup consists of Otomo (guitar, turntables), Hirose Junji (sax), Kato Hideki (bass, voice), Uemura Masahiro (drums), and Eye Yamataka (vocals). All five of 'em make a LOT of noise. Imagine the Eye-fronted Naked City falling down the stairs, in the throes of a violent seizure. This performance dates from just prior to their first album's release and shares its punked-out energy, as well as a few of the same "songs". Two additional tracks at the end of the disc are studio recordings, previously unreleased material from the sessions for that debut album. As the Doubtmusic website says, "this is remembrance of fresh / poisonous earlier Ground Zero after 15 years."
This comes in typically fine Doubtmusic packaging, a handsome digipack design, and is basically essential for all hardcore Ground Zero and/or Eye Yamataka fans! And its value as an archival release is enhanced in light of the fact that you can't get their first album anymore anyway.
The second record by Otomo Yoshihide's Ground Zero is an expansion of a concept started by German artists Heiner Goebbels and Alfred 23 Harth, and is modestly accredited as a "remix of the Peking Oper" by the aforementioned duo. The Revolutionary Pekinese Opera is an amazing aural collage, where Otomo deconstructs a recording of a traditional Chinese opera in the '60s, rearranging the bits into new forms as well as recomposing within the gaps for his Ground Zero group. The group is augmented with many sampled "guests" including Goebbels and Harth, Steve Beresford, Compostela (mysterious street band from Japan who had an incredible disc on Tzadik!), Christian Marclay and Jon Rose (whose violin work here is incredible!) among many others. A dense, exciting and cinematic listening experience.
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Japanese avant-rock duo Guillotine Kyodai enlist a who's who of underground Japanese experimental guitarists to play a kind of "pass it along" game: each track features two guitarists dueting on an initial theme, which mutates as it is passed from guitarist to guitarist. Axemen include members of Ground Zero, Boredoms, Melt Banana, Solmania, Optical*8, Altered States, Bondage Fruit, and Kirihito. Not only conceptually interesting, this is good listening and probably essential to anyone who owns more than two records by the bands listed above.
In his one-man wrecking crew Guilty Connector, Kohei "The Fast" Nakagawa arms himself with homebuilt effects boxes that he physically attacks with metal pipes(!). Having previously presented us with jet-engine 'covers' of Black Sabbath and The Ramones as well as successful outings alongside Birchville Cat Motel and Zeni Geva's Tabata, Kohei takes his volatile Utsu / Shibaki electronics to the Ground Fault label, who ranked this album a III (loud) using their intensity of scale they employ to grade their releases. III is a polite way to describe the volatility of Cosmic Trigger / 2AM Visit, as Kohei blasts out of the gates with volcanic noise eruptions with all of the violence heard in the pre-digital Merzbow recordings from the mid-'90s. Mechanical grindings, claustrophobic scapings, train-wreck rhythms, and drum-kit pummelling all give the impression that like Burmese and Aufgehoben, there might actually be a band underneath all of the noise and cacophony; but in fact, there's only Kohei The Fast! Cosmic Trigger / 2AM Visit also features a guest appearance from Schimpfluch's Sudden Infant for one the more dadaist recordings on this album with its spastic squiggles of reel-to-reel tape warble punctuated by head-splitting noise. Listen on headphones at your own risk, this one can be pretty damn painful.
Guilty Connector is Tokyo's Kohei "Fast" Nakagawa, the one-man goliath of jet engine sonics. Not since Merzbow's "Rainbow Electronics" have you witnessed sheer power and unrelenting force. Remember the first time you put on Monde Bruits? If you miss the Golden Years of noise (circa 1991-1996), this'll certainly take you back...
Japan's one man, harsh electronic,metal machine wrecking crew returns with a 3" cd of 'covers', of Black Sabbath's 'Symptom Of The Universe' and the Ramones' 'Blitzkrieg Bop.' And while Kohei The Fast, the man behind GC, does play actual guitar, the bulk of his sound is made up of "UTSU electronics" and field recordings. You get a glimpse of those classic riffs before they are thrown melody first into the tree shredder, and what comes out the other side is a ear shredding, brain rattling, bone breaking wall of shrieking feedback, buzzing instrument hum and an avalance of white/pink noise. Japanoise fanatics are gonna need this!
Wow, an interesting collaboration here. Mitsuru Tabata you may know as K.K. Null's co-guitarist in Japanese heavies Zeni Geva, as well as being an early member of the Boredoms, among other bands on his lengthy resume. He's also a solo artist -- his 1999 album "Brainsville" became a big favorite around here, an excursion into "rural Eastern psych" guitar that demonstrated his obvious love of '70s krautrock head music (Kawabata Makoto isn't the only Japanese guy obsessed with that stuff!).
Meanwhile, Tokyo's Kohei "The Fast" Nakagawa has made quite a few uber-noisy recordings under the name Guilty Connector, brutal power electronics in a punky Merzbow vein, including a split with Birchville Cat Motel. Good harsh stuff.
So, what does a collaboration between these two sound like? Well apparently Tabata (a big record collector) had been mentoring his friend Kouhei's interest in dub and psychedelic music, and naturally enough the duo was soon inspired to do these recordings, which turned out much more abstract and noisy that Tabata's "Brainsville", although Kohei's noise antics are tempered by Tabata's melodic psych ideas. Instruments utilized primirarly include electric guitars, guitar-synth, effects (Tabata) and "UTSU electronics" (Kohei), plus everything from acoustic 12 string guitar to toy music boxes to theremins, percussion, contact mics, and electric heaters! Oh and tape loops, lots of tape loops. The tracks are dynamic and varied -- some pieces end up all spacey and droned-out, with howling layers of distortion, while others are full of blip and electro-acoustic glitch, with bell-like sounds and echoey electronics. Certainly Japanophile fans of Acid Mothers Temples' most erratic and eccentric stuff, the Boredoms Super Roots experiments, Boris with Keiji Haino, etc. should dig this. Boasting a nice cover painting by underground manga artist Imiri Sakebashira, this is a fine debut release for French label Even Stitle.
MPEG Stream: "Le Schiaue Esistono Ancora" [/audio/guiltytabataleschiaue.m3u]
If I understand the liner notes correctly, this is music made by mentally-handicapped Buddhist priests? Regardless, if you're into the psychedelic sounds of other Japanese bands like Ghost, the however-IQ-impaired grooves of these folks may well appeal.
"Intellectually challenged" buddhist priests perform improv with Japanese bass player Motoharu- Yoshizawa.
"'Seisou' live as Buddhist priests in the temple, Kouganji, and are considered somewhat pushed out of society as 'intellectually challenged'. With Gyaantees as the nucleus, these 'seisou' perform free improvised music with many other musicians as well. Why improvised performance? Well, the 'seisou' seem to lack the ability to remember the songs and lyrics." -from the liner notes.
US release of a new solo album by Japanese avant-garde vocalist/composer Haco, who used to sing for the prog-pop band After Dinner. More recently, she formed the wonderful Hoahio trio with Sachiko M and Yagi Michiyo. Fans of that group (we listed their recent Tzadik album not long ago) will definitely enjoy "Happiness Proof". It's a similar sort of unpredictable electronic-infused avant-pop. Haco gets a little help from her friends, as lots of interesting folks appear on this disc -- it's almost a who's-who of Japanese underground scenesters: Tsuyama Atsushi (Omoide Hatoba, Acid Mothers Temple, Akaten, etc.), Yamamoto Seiichi (Boredoms, Omoide Hatoba, etc.), Uchihashi Kazuhisa (Altered States, Ground Zero, etc. -- he plays daxophone on here as well as guitar!), and turntablist Otomo Yoshihide (Ground Zero, ISO, etc.), among others. There's also contributions from Belgian Pierre Bastien and his Mecanium, a mechanical orchestra. Delightful. Note the nice price too!
Graced with an amazing black & white (mostly black) cover photo of a spectral, luminous Keiji Haino reading a book, this has got a French title 'cause it's released on a French label, Turtles' Dream, apparently a sub-division of the A Bruit Secret label that's known for releases in the Japanese "onkyo" genre...well, Haino is of course Japanese too but this is far from the zen-like silence of onkyo stuff! Improv-psych master Keiji Haino kicks out the jams here not with his usual apocalyptic guitar playing (what he's best known for) but with "rhythm machine" and his own unique vocal stylings. Dunno what "rhythm machine" means tech-wise exactly, some sort of drum machine it seems, plus what sounds like a real cymbal being hit. My Keiji Haino fan friends and myself are now convinced that the man could play *anything* (a kazoo, a rainstick, a bug-zapper?) and still sound like himself -- that is, amazing. He certainly expands the assumed area of expression of the drum machine with this album, making even Ikue Mori sound tame. The recording or production itself is an important part of that, it really is *present*, the drum hits sounding like they're smacking you in the forehead. This is presumably a live recording, but the vocals are somehow overdubbed/multitracked/looped and layered, at moments building with the drum machine's frenzy into insane mayhem as if multiple Hainos were wrestling one another, while in other sections of this piece (for it is one long, 45 minute track) being strangely beautiful, just unearthly haunting cries, with no beats beneath. Definitely an intense listen, Haino taking to mechanical extremes his percussion obsession of late (other indications of this obsession: that he took over the drum stool in his band Fushitsusha, and recently released an amazing live video of solo percussion-only performance...)
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French import. Solo live performances all around the world.
Two new recordings from the very prolific Keiji Haino, although there's no indication as to when or where. Disc one is a single piece for hurdy-gurdy and voice titled "Whereto can I cast away this fragment echo called The End, so that I may summon an
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"Black blues" has a couple of meanings here -- these may indeed be African-American blues songs being performed (and deformed) by Mr. Keiji Haino, and in addition the idea of 'the blues' is being subjected to the blackness that is himself, for Haino is of course the uncontested Dark Lord of the Japanese psych/improv scene. The Fushitsusha leader has done covers before (he even has a covers band, Aihiyo) but this takes the interpretive process to an extremely conceptual level. There are in fact TWO (separately available but, we think, equally desirable and complimentary) Black Blues albums, both with the exact same title. We've added the acoustic and electric designations to differentiate them in our database, but in physical fact, the packaging for them only differs with regard to the catalog numbers found on the spine (DSA-54087 for the acoustic and DSA-54088 for the electric) and the cover photo, which is actually identical on both discs but flipped in mirror image. If you put the electric disc on the left and the acoustic disc on the right, the Hainos in the photos on the covers will be looking at each other. We're not sure why this was released like this, since doing it as a double disc set would seem more practical and less confusing, but that's the way it is (and there's no real choice to be made, fans need 'em both). Now to the music -- the "acoustic" disc (a misnomer, really, as the guitar he's playing, quietly, sounds electric) consists of six tracks, including "Black Eyes", "Town In Black Fog", and the epic "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", all intimate and hushed, the inner whisper of a soul in torment, seeking peace. The exact same tracklist is mirrored on the "electric" disc, cranked up of course, as Haino howls from throat and lungs and guitar strings and amplifier, crying out in anguish to both men and gods. Both are harrowing and psychically "heavy". Blues connoisseurs will likely be bewildered and disturbed, but those of us who feel the merest of utterances from Keiji Haino -- via his voice or guitar -- can speak more than many musicians produce in an entire career, will be rapt in awe.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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"Black blues" has a couple of meanings here -- these may indeed be African-American blues songs being performed (and deformed) by Mr. Keiji Haino, and in addition the idea of 'the blues' is being subjected to the blackness that is himself, for Haino is of course the uncontested Dark Lord of the Japanese psych/improv scene. The Fushitsusha leader has done covers before (he even has a covers band, Aihiyo) but this takes the interpretive process to an extremely conceptual level. There are in fact TWO (separately available but, we think, equally desirable and complimentary) Black Blues albums, both with the exact same title. We're added the acoustic and electric designations to differentiate them in our database, but in physical fact, the packaging for them only differs with regard to the catalog numbers found on the spine (DSA-54087 for the acoustic and DSA-54088 for the electric) and the cover photo, which is actually identical on both discs but flipped in mirror image. If you put the electric disc on the left and the acoustic disc on the right, the Hainos in the photos on the covers will be looking at each other. We're not sure why this was released like this, since doing it as a double disc set would seem more practical and less confusing, but that's the way it is (and there's no real choice to be made, fans need 'em both). Now to the music -- the "acoustic" disc (a misnomer, really, as the guitar he's playing, quietly, sounds electric) consists of six tracks, including "Black Eyes", "Town In Black Fog", and the epic "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean", all intimate and hushed, the inner whisper of a soul in torment, seeking peace. The exact same tracklist is mirrored on the "electric" disc, cranked up of course, as Haino howls from throat and lungs and guitar strings and amplifier, crying out in anguish to both men and gods. Both are harrowing and psychically "heavy". Blues connoisseurs will likely be bewildered and disturbed, but those of us who feel the merest of utterances from Keiji Haino -- via his voice or guitar -- can speak more than many musicians produce in an entire career, will be rapt in awe.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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A sequel to Haino's 21st Century Hard-y-guide-y Man disc, this is more of his dark drone music for the hurdy-gurdy. For fans of both Haino and, say, Tony Conrad...
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Live solo guitar outsiderness from Fushitsusha mastermind, his first domestic cd release.
Drums. Just drums. That's what's up with this new release from Tokyo underground psych maestro Keiji Haino. He's apparently always wanted to do a solo album for drum kit alone and now PSF has gone and let him do it, even though most of his fans know him primarily as a guitarist. Though, we've already heard him do a solo drum MACHINE album (the rather extreme 'C'est Parfait' Endoctrine Tu Tombes La Tete La Premiere) and play the drum kit for a guitar-less Fushitsusha session (the dramatic and controversial Origin's Hesitation). Then there was his fascinating video release simply titled Percussion. And now here's Global Ancient Atmosphere which is nothing but drums as we said. Drums and when not drums, silence. Some folks will hear this and say it sounds like a "drum check". Ok, you've got a point. Certainly I don't think I can come up with something brilliant to say about this, like "an austere yet thrilling investigation of attack and decay on nothing less than the molecular level" as Alan Cummings (I believe) wrote for the press release. But I do know that I'm gonna buy one, 'cause I'm a huge Keiji Haino fan and love everything he does!
Seriously, though, Haino can make you believe that every drum-hit has meaning, as does every space between. While some of his other percussion-oriented releases seem to have more going on that this one (the above mentioned are, to me, really amazing triumphs of emotion/expression over mere technique -- something that could be said about his guitar playing as well), this one is probably a little harder to appreciate. But maybe it's worth the effort. He thought it was.
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New solo guitar work including rerecorded versions of super-old and long-out-of-print Fushitsusha stuff.
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Haino-san is back with another hurdy gurdy adventure! (catalog number PSFD-8029)
Holy moly. Yes this limited-edition, import double LP goes for $38 bucks. But we've only got a handful, quite possibly won't ever see any more and it IS one of the only vinyl releases ever (certainly the only one currently-if-not-for-long in print) from the shamanistic psychedelic maestro that the world (well, very small portions of the world) knows as Keiji Haino, either solo or in his Fushitsusha combo. So it's got that arcane relic quality to it, y'know?
'Next' Let's Try Changing The Shape already came out on cd last year (also on Swordfish) but it's already out of print in that format, and this lp -- packaged in a 'hand-crafted', hand-numbered sleeve -- is thus also the only way to get this music, which (the important part) is pretty great. Let's revisit our review of the cd:
I know this is gonna sound dorky, but I (Allan) sometimes feel blessed to be in the presence, even via recorded media, of Keiji Haino. Yeah I'm a pretty devout fan of the 51 year old Japanese psychedelic shaman-in-black. It's a shame that outside of the realm of indie/underground/Japanophile music geeks, Haino is not better known. As far as I'm concerned, he's a 20th (now 21st) century artistic genius deserving of recognition and reverence from the wider world's institutions of high culture. Why? Well as my roommate likes to put it, his shit's just so tight. He can make harrowing, dark, cosmic, soul-bearing music out of anything: his trusty guitar and feedback, a tambourine, his own voice... But even fans like me might have found his last solo release on PSF, the all-acoustic guitar workout Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki, tough going. But THIS new disc is one I'd wholeheartedly recommend even to the uninitiated. According to the label it "sees him developing themes on from his last PSF release." I think by that they're not referring to Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki but to his previous PSF disc, the 'grey album' Mazu Wa Iro O Nakuso Ka. That was an incredible, hypnotic document of Haino in a gentle, ghostly mood, recording at home presumably, accompanying himself via overdubs on a 4-track, quite unlike his more typical live, over-amped, no-overdubs method. Now on 'Next' Let's Try Changing The Shape, Haino again experiments with overdubbing. However his guitar sound on this tends towards the harsher electric tones of 'classic Haino' (solo and with his band Fushitsusha), much less 'jazzy' than on Mazu Wa... the grey is gone and he's back to the blackness. The six tracks found here all feature layers of electric guitar and vocal overdubs, a multitude of Keiji's playing together. To some this may sound chaotic and confused, but careful listening will reveal the ways in which Haino has carefully constructed these pieces. On the more guitar-heavy tracks his web of sound builds and builds in density, becoming a narcotic drone not unlike some Skullflower stuff, while other tracks are based more around Haino's vocal parts -- there's one I thought was gonna be all acapella until his guitar appeared a few minutes in -- raw and repetitious, almost Reynolisan. The album ends with a final descent into the abyss, a 26 minute trip that gets so seriously spooky that you suspect the overdubbing is Haino's way of not feeling so alone... Definitely Keiji Haino (and this album) is not for everybody, but it's worth finding out if he's for you because your life will be better for it, if you find his art speaks to you the way it does to me.
