Japan's Ruins are/were a bass and drums prog-spazz duo lead by octopoidal drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. Ruins have been longtime faves 'round here for their manic precision and complex catchiness, kind of a cross between Melt-Banana and Magma, played by a two-piece. Hopefully, you know all about Ruins already. And if you're a fan, then you're reading the right review!
Goddamn, if you thought that Ruins were crazy... believe it or not, Yoshida's latest duo project has upped the ante quite a bit. Teaming with guitarist Imahori Tsueno, and further augmented by computer processing, this takes Yoshida's brand of frenzied prog palpitations into hyperdrive. Considering what we know Yoshida can do live with no overdubs (and even all by himself) it's positively dangerous to allow him and his collaborator to crank up the craziness with technology. Yet the Doubtmusic label has allowed them to do it, twice -- this is their second disc. As you may recall, we already raved about the first one, Territory, last year. This one is equally awesome, if you're at all inclined towards this sort of technical musical mania. It will leave you breathless, staring at your stereo, jaw on floor. There's 17 tracks, ranging from one minute four seconds to eight minutes fifty seconds. All of 'em action packed, constructed through a partially improvised creative process that incorporates malfunctioning video game sounds one nano second, virtuoso jazz fusion licks the next... kecak-like vocal parts, blasting rhythms, heavy guitar rippage. And there's also artificial speed manipulations, pitch shifting, and jump-cut electronic edits -- yeah just when you thought it couldn't get any more dense or intense, it's like they flip a switch and suddenly achieve superhuman levels of prog rock performance (beyond even what the Ruins are known for!).
It's not all speedy spasmodicism, as they also delve into some momentary moody, much calmer atmospherics... always ready to turn a corner into utter ADD insanity, however. While still always retaining a knack for ear-catching riffage, as per the Ruins at their best. And this IS the most Ruins-y thing we've heard in a while!! Of course. Boy this makes us happy.
Jeepers. Could Tatsuya Yoshida of Japan's Ruins make his music even MORE hyperkinetic and choppy and rapidfire and precise??? I mean, he already holds the undisputed "King of Japanese Crazy Prog Rock Composition" crown doesn't he? Even when performing live just by himself with no overdubs, which we've seen him do, he does more playing/drumming/singing on multiple instruments than a whole concert hall full of Berklee grads, AND his music is as catchy as it is chaotic and complex. So, team him up with another equally amazing/absurd musician, and give 'em both a computer assist and then you've got some serious insanity -- and that's what this is. Yoshida (drums, darbuka, voice, devices) in a "Japanese hyper duet" with Imahori Tsuneo (guitars, devices) who was a founding member in the eighties of experimental prog-fusion outfit Tipographica and currently has a career in the field of anime and PS2 videogame soundtracks. Their collaborative process consisted of "composition and improvisation; and file exchange, overdubbing, and extensive editing on computer." That computer probably blew a few fuses along the way. This Territory disc is sorta like the intense Magmoid prog of Ruins meets the electronic metallic complexities of James Ploktin's Phantomsmasher project. A blender on high stuffed with stabbing shards of guitar, plentiful percussion, video game FX, vocal babble, jazz licks, blissful synths, and even some campfire country ("Autonomy"). Several of the 17 tracks here, while not entirely "calm", are definitely interludes that allow the listener can catch their breath, although in most cases these relaxed moments soon give way to an outburst of frantic action.
Any Ruins fan should be pleased, particularly since there hasn't been a Ruins release in quite a while (we're not even sure if Yoshida's got a bass player for that band anymore, hasn't he been performing as "Ruins Alone"?). Though of course he has been keeping busy with a variety of other collaborations and projects like Acid Mothers Temple SWR, Sekkutusu Jean, Korekyojinn and Koenjihyakkei, and now this excellent piece of work, another new direction for the Ruins style of sound...
By the way, it's also the latest release from doubtmusic (the great, relatively new Japanese label, whose releases we've reviewed already include two crucial Masayuki Takayanagi reissues and several Otomo Yoshihide efforts, among them his Out To Lunch album), chalk another one up for them!
Maybe not your typical jazz trio, this Japanese group. Not that we'd expect anything typical from the Doubtmusic label. Bandleader Imai Kazuo (of Marginal Consort) plays amplified acoustic guitar, Suzuki Manabu is credited with electronics, and the third member of the trio, Ito Atsuhiro, performs on something called an "optron". As near as we can tell, that unusual instrument is a homebuilt device resembling a florescent tube light fixture. In fact, it IS a florescent light fixture, with some modifications.
Kazuo's "controllable instrument" the guitar handles the orthodox musical content here, playing some lovely, recognizable melodies and jazzy chords, though he switches to sudden atonal outbursts of frantic skronk sometimes too. But it's the other two members of the trio who really bring the noise and nothing but, the "uncontrollable" electronics and optron outputting a varied, often quite cacophonous improvised barrage of buzzings and cracklings and feedback, all fritzed and glitched like malfunctioning mad scientist laboratory equipment! It can be calm, as with their version of avant composer/vocalist Annette Peacock's "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway" that features Imai picking out slow, sparse notes on his guitar amidst near-ambient hum and static from Ito's optron and what sounds a lot like video-arcade machine sounds emulated by Suzuki's electronics.
But at (many) points, this gets pretty intensely dense with distortion and noisiness. Definitely a crossover from straight jazz into full-on, Hijokaidan or Merzbow style Japanese noise territory, as on the totally freaked out title track, another composition by Annette Peacock. These guys are REALLY into Peacock, there's in fact four of her pieces on the cd, alongside tunes originally by Cole Porter, Thelonious Monk, Lee Konitz, Georges Brassens, and even J.S. Bach! The inclusion of several well-known standards serves to make this seem even noisier, yet also more accessible at the same time. For instance, Cole Porter's "So In Love" sounds like you're hearing it via a shortwave radio transmission, with heavy hissing atmospheric interference.
Not surprisingly, it turns out that the 54 year old Imai had been a student of the late great guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, who pioneered some of the noisiest jazz ever but also performed traditional stuff too. (In the '70s, Imai briefly played with Takayanagi's New Directions Unit - and also the Taj Mahal Travellers and East Bionic Symphonia too!). So if Imai were to "play pretty" it makes sense he would do so in a context such as this.
And, packaged along with the cd in the thick, gatefold miniature LP style sleeve, there's also a 40-minute dvd disc included here too, wherein you can see the optron in action, intermittently blinking brightly in Ito's lap as it makes its strange sounds. In close up shots, it's as if the trio is performing amidst flashes of lightning. The dvd features alternate takes of a couple of the tracks from the cd, as well as three Imai originals and yet another composition by Annette Peacock. As with the cd, this material was recorded live in the GOK Sound studio... some of the tracks in front of a studio audience, all of whom are politely acknowledged by name on the sleeve.
The entity that released the phenomenal and weighty 10-cd wooden box set known as "Improvised Music From Japan" (box, label, website) is now also a magazine. Printed in both English and Japanese, this squarebound, digest-sized debut issue runs to about 132 pages (with the Japanese text occupying the second half, or first if you read it back-to-front Japanese style). And, it comes with a cd compilation bound inside the front (or back) cover. Reviews, interviews and essays by and about the likes of Otomo Yoshihide, Seiichi Yamamoto, Ami Yoshida, Uchihashi Kzuhisa, Phew, Aki Onda, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Utah Kawasaki, and many others make for fasinating reading if you're the sort of avant-garde music fan at all curious about the underground Japanese improvising scene. There's a review of, and translated excerpts from, a book called "The History Of Japanese Free Jazz" which us English-only types will find to be extremely tantalizing. Perhaps a full English translation of the book could be future project for the industrious Improvised Music From Japan folks? Info about such artists as Masayuki Takanyangi, the Taj Mahal Travellers, and Kaoru Abe is certainly hard to come by in the West, so it would be nice...
Meanwhile, on the compact disc, there's works by Toshimaru Nakamura, Haco, Yoshio Machida, Masahiko Okura and others. Creaking door ambience, silence, acoustic guitars, shortwave static crackle, field recordings, laptop computers, trombone drone... it's a really nice disc, proof of why this scene deserves such a journal.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oh Lordy, it's here. Weren't you just asking us about when the next issue of Improvised Music From Japan was going to arrive? All 200 pages (half in English, half in Japanese) of it, plus two compliation cds. Do any of these names interest or excite you: Kazue Sawai, Aki Onda, Kazuo Imai, Tetuzi Akiyama, Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Sachiko M, Taku Sugimoto, Haco? Then this is for you, and you probably *were* asking us about it... All those folks and more appear in these pages, along with a bunch of tantalizing reviews. And there's a special section from Otomo Yoshihide all about making connections with the Korean free jazz scene, in which he interviews saxophonist Kang Tae Hwan. So, if Japanese free jazz / 'onkyo' / improv electronics etc. is your thing, here you go, plenty of good readin'. Not to mention listenin', as the two discs are crammed with all sorts of interesting and diverse performances from many of the artists mentioned above. We were particularily chuffed to check out the "improvised extreme optical core unit" Optrum who provide five noisy tracks on disc two.
The wait is over -- now that it's 2006, the 2005 edition of Improvised Music From Japan is here! It's an indispensable journal to those of you, like us, who are confirmed musical Japanophiles and/or into the extremes of improvised sound activity. This time around, IMJ consists of a beautifully designed 128 page digest-sized book accompanied by two cds tucked under its front and back covers. The print portion of this is devoted entirely to write-ups about new albums from 2004 and 2005, over 350 of them (of which 21 are Merzbow releases!). Some are full articles all about a particular artist, others are briefer descriptions or impressions of the music, sometimes written by the artist in question (so we won't call these "reviews" in the consumer-guide sense, though this could be used that way). As always, the text is presented in both Japanese and English, along with thumbnail album cover pics. Besides all the Merzbow, there's plenty of names you might know here, and plenty more you probably don't. And you also find some non-Japanese artists in here as well (David Grubbs, Bastard Noise, Carl Stone, etc.) included because they've been released on a Japanese label or have collaborated with Japanese musicians.
Perusing this, you're gonna start making a list of releases you hadn't heard of before to try and hunt down -- we certainly did. One revelation was that Omoide Hatoba released a new album in 2004, we hadn't known that!! Gosh. Gotta get a hold of that somehow.
Meanwhile, the cds, like the magazine, feature both relatively well-known improvisers and (to us) newcomers. Among the 21 tracks spread across these two cds, you'll find pieces by familiar names like Toshiya Tsunoda, Merzbow and Kiyoshi Mizutani. But also you'll be introduced to the likes of VOIMA, sim and Tetsuya Umeda (whose track "Error Piano", featuring Yasuhisa Mizutani improvising on the piano whilst Umeda "loiters" nearby, with a portable radio, is indicative in its peculiarity and spontaneity of the variety of music to be heard on these discs and read about in the pages of the magazine). Out-jazz, mimimal electronics, brutal noise, all of the above and everything in between, that's the IMJ aesthetic”a good match for many curious AQ customers wethinks.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Second issue (sort of, they call it "Extra") of this print and audio journal devoted to the underground Japanese electro-acoustic improvisation scene. Definitely THE place to go to get enlightened about what's happening on that front. In both English and Japanese, this thick 128 page magazine features interviews with Ami Yoshida, Shoji Hano, and numerous others we're less familiar with, quite a few of 'em from a young generation of musicians here dubbed "Improv's New Waves". There's also a ton of reviews of intriguing cd releases that you'll probably only find out about here (and never see in a shop outside of Japan), and of course there's the magazine's audio portion: this time around, two discs full of cuts by artists from that "New Waves" scene, everything from jazz trumpet to turntables to death metal drums n' laptop. There's couple bonus cuts as well, including one from, um, old wave improvisor Shoji Hano.
With a previous cdr on Last Visible Dog (and a cd on PSF some years before that), Shuji Inaba is a Japanese avant-folk singer and guitarist who hasn't reached the same level of documentation as peers like Kan Mikami and Kazuki Tomokawa. No 13 cd box set for Shuji yet! And some might find the prospect of such a box set quite frightening -- a single disc of his raw acoustic guitar playing and whisper-scream vocalizations will be more than enough for a lot of folks. Others will find Inaba's Rapture Of Being Destroyed to be a harrowing yet compelling listen. With some tracks filled with stark outbursts from silence and others more 'song' like, this is a great record recommended for those who already dig the likes of Dead Raven Choir and the aforementioned Kan Mikami. This Last Visible Dog cd release comes with Inaba's poetic lyrics translated into English by Alan Cummings, always a nice touch although the emotion of the man's singing and playing requires no translation. And to quibble: we suggest that perhaps the word 'flipside' in the title might have been better rendered as 'inverse'... 'flipside' just seems too slangy for stuff this deep and intense.
Live acoustic recording of intense, dismal outsider folk from rural Western Japanese singer/songwriter Shuji Inaba. Yoenzanga was previously one of LVD's cd-r releases, back when they were a cd-r label only, and is now blessed with an actual cd edition. You also may recognize Inaba's name as he has had a disc released by Japan's PSF label a few years back. And indeed his raw, emotive balladry is comparable to the politically driven psych folk of fellow PSFers Kan Mikami and Kazuki Tomokawa, whom we love.
Alan Cummings provides English translations of Inaba's lyrics in the liner notes, which is a plus, though really (as with Mikami and Tomokawa too) there's plenty just to FEEL in Inaba's harrowing voice and the haunting, sometimes violent, way he plays his guitar that goes beyond language.
They are the best noise band. 'Cuz they're the noisiest. Simple as that. At least that's what Allan thinks, and he's got almost all their umpteen cds. Though we haven't really done a scientific test of noisiness, Merzbow vs. Hijokaidan vs. Masonna vs. Incapacitants, we all agree they sure would hold their own in any imaginable noise contest. Japanese extreme noise duo (and bankers by profession) Toshiji Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai aka Incapacitants have been blowing minds and eardrums for years now. This new disc on Alchemy consists of four brutal wall-of-sound tracks, exploding electronics almost psychedelically dense. One of these tracks was recorded live in Canada at the No Music Festival in 2003, another one captured at club called Lush in Tokyo last year, while the other two are studio recordings (not that it matters much).
Their banking experience is perhaps reflected in the song titles "What A Stupid Bureaucrat!!!" and "Fund Trap", while the title of the 22 minute track "Please Don't Try This At Home" almost goes without saying!
Man, sometimes this business of actually "reviewing" things just seems superfluous...or ridiculous... or even supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. All those terms apply in the case of this, a TEN cd box set by Japanese noise band Incapacitants, that says "Incapacitants Box Is Stupid" right on the front of it fergoshsakes. That's the title, in silvery metallic print on the lid of the black cardboard box that contains these ten compact discs full of sheer, unrelenting, exploding, horrible grinding noise by one of the most extreme Japanese noise bands in the biz. What more need we say? Other than to explain that Box Is Stupid, released on Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk label, heroically collects the contents of the duo's cassette-only releases from the nineties, stuff released in limited editions that we'd never seen or heard before. And they're all "remastered from the original master tapes" (which you might find to be a pretty funny statement after hearing this). Each cd comes in a cardboard sleeve, bearing graphics from the original cassette releases, or sometime a color photo of the actual cassette(s). The discs are: Stupid Is Stupid [Studio Materials], Stupid Is Stupid [Live Materials], Extreme Gospel Nights, Ad Nauseam [Edition Mikawa], Ad Nauseam [Edition Kosakai], Ad Nauseam [Edition Live], D.D.D.D., The Tongue, Cosmic Incapacitants, and I, Residuum. That's about XX hours of dense, dynamic, uber-distorted NOISE. Also packed in the box is a thick, 40 page booklet, with full color photos from various spasming live Incapacitants actions, and liner notes printed in both English and Japanese from fans/fellow musicians Otomo Yoshihide (Ground Zero, ONJO, etc.) and Jim Sauter (Borbetomagus), as well as personal band histories from both members of Incapacitants, founder Toshiji Mikawa and loyal sidekick Fumio Kosakai.
Otomo's essay is entitled "I Love The Incapacitants More Than Anything"!! He doesn't think Box Is Stupid. To him, Incapacitants are the ultimate questing expression of what got him into improvised music and noise to begin with, the legacy of Japanese free jazz masters Masayuki Takayanagi and Kaoru Abe. Elsewhere in these essays, we learn that Eye from the Boredoms was once Mikawa's collaborator in Incapacitants, early on before Kosakai joined. We also find out from Mikawa why they're called Incapacitants (it's worth quoting: "The term is a military one used to designate the various kinds of chemical substances which can be used in times of war or terrorism, not to injure or kill enemy combatants, but rather to render them incapable of resistance. My intention was consciously extreme - to attack the audience's auditory canals with my noise and thus render them incapable of fighting back."). It's clear from their writings that Mikawa and Kosakai both bring a lot of serious thought and artistic passion to the noise they make. And clear from the noise they make that they are INSANE. Just kidding. While listening to Box Is Stupid might drive some folks mad, others of us will find it almost psychedelically trance-inducing.
Incapacitants is not only beloved by Otomo Yoshihide, but they're also Allan here at AQ's all time favorite Japanese noise group. Why? Maybe he was smitten by the sharp graphics of their Alchemy label cd releases. Maybe he likes the idea of two middle-aged, mild mannered, slightly chubby Japanese professionals indulging in freaked out electronic mayhem. Maybe they ARE the noisiest. And maybe it just makes sense to pick a favorite Japanese noise artist, 'cause it would be tough to keep up with 'em all. Heck you could go broke trying to buy every Merzbow release, for example. (Though, Allan does own the 50-cd Merzbox, as do several others of us here at AQ.) While Box Is Stupid isn't a fetish object quite on the scale of the Merzbox, it still pushes many of the same absurd noise-lovin' buttons. Gotta have it, if you're a real Incapacitants fan. In fact, that's the definition of anyone who would buy this!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The latest from this semi-legendary Japanese noise duo. A really painful noise storm as only these mild mannered bankers can create, with their usual delightful finance-related song titles (like "Securitization of Eel"). For some reason, this is Allan's favorite Japanese noise band.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Allan's favorite Japanese noise band ('cause they're chubby bankers by day, chubby noise-freaks at night?) return with a disc of live material. Wait, I thought all their recordings were (more or less) live? Anway, this documents a November 5th, 1999 show in Austria and a December 25th, 1999 show in Tokyo (aptly titled "The Strongest Christmas Ever"). For the latter performance, this electronics duo is joined by drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of the Ruins, who does his best to add to the din and contribute to the holiday spirit. As always, NOISY!
Hella noisy. No suprise there!
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.
Alchemy Records digs into their vaults yet again to re-issue on cd a 1989 Alchemy LP by the notorious Japanese noise act Incapacitants. This makes for Incapacitants' eighth cd release on Alchemy! Wow, what a legacy of high-end skree, low-end rumble,
Japanese noise otaku, here's a limited-to-300 vinyl-only artifact you might be interested in... Collaborating with mysterious British noisican Abdul Squeerter's (In Spite Of Flaming Creatures) project, Allan's favorite ear-flaying Japanese noise duo the Incapacitants are in fine form here. Six tracks of dense, dynamic, electronic noise fuckery. If you need to figure out if you're part of "Vitamin Buckfact"'s target audience, look around your room. Is that a stack of vintage Bananafish magazines in the corner? Some precious Chocolate Monk cassettes in that box over there? Alchemy cds on top of the stereo? Well then this is for you if you act quick! It's basically a Bananfish 'zine love-in (indeed, until now, the only wide-spread documentation of Mr. Squeerter's creativity, or mere existence, was some writing he did for Bananafish).
Back in 2007, this female Japanese singer-songwriter (and improvisor, too) made a cd with Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, called Slip Beneath The Distant Tree, that we really loved. Experimental pop/prog, which included covers of Genesis, This Heat, Soft Machine, and several classical composers. Eiko's multi-instrumental skills were impressive, and her sweet voice appealing - we said then we were curious to hear more from her.
Apparently the ubiquitous Jim O'Rourke is a fan too, and probably had something to do with Drag City releasing this new Eiko Ishibashi solo outing, her vinyl-only domestic US debut, which he produced and also plays on. It's a dreamy set of songs, what Drag City calls "a progressive sci-fi pop album", and we can see why Eiko is apparently already kinda "big in Japan". Her gentle, whisper-ish vocals grace songs that swell with elegant yet jaunty piano melodies; there's tight chamber pop orchestration in back of it all, with rhythms that can get prog-propulsive, though this is definitely more light and airy of an affair than the more mathematically-minded music she made with Yoshida. Quite nice indeed.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
White Heaven singer's solo album.
We sold so many of these when we made it Record Of The Week a while back, and everyone we know who bought a copy freaked out and declared it one of their new all time favorites, and for good reason it's an amazing, mind blowing, tripped out chunk of pure sonic inspiration. It's strange and beautiful and weirdly heavy, and proggy and tribal and it's funky as all get out. Well, we managed to get a final batch from the label, it's now sold out NEVER to be repressed, so if you missed out on this the first time around, you got yourself one more chance, don't blow it.
It's no longer out of the ordinary for a rock band to look beyond rock for inspiration. Or a jazz band, looking to expand their sound. It definitely makes sense as musicians are generally constantly striving to explore, to open their minds, their music, searching for unique instruments, new ideas, new sounds, even looking for something much more ineffable, something more spiritual. Psychedelic rock bands have typically looked East, The Beatles are probably the prime example of a rock band looking to India for musical AND spiritual inspiration. But on a much smaller scale, modern music develops and expands by incorporating new influences, the more 'exotic' the better. So for years, we could watch bands do just that, incorporate new instruments, sitars, tablas, whatever, alternate tunings, Eastern scales. Jazz musicians on the other hand, tended to look to Africa for inspiration, the tribal drumming, the vocal chants, all found their way onto tons of amazing records, amazing in part because of what they borrowed from the African music that was their genesis, as with many many discs by the Art Ensemble, Coltrane, Don Cherry, etc., etc.�
So if all this borrowing and influence is so commonplace, what's the big deal with this disc, a deluxe reissue of a rare 1972 LP entitled Uganda, by Japan's strangely named Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffalo? Well to begin with, imagine a Japanese jazz drummer in the early seventies, so obsessed with African music, that not only are his records already rife with African influences, but he eventually travels there, and proceeds to play with local musicians, collects indigenous instruments, and returns, driven to realize the record he knows he must make, Uganda, a record that manages to sound like African music, jazz and psychedelic rock, while sounding like nothing else. Ishikawa teamed up with fellow percussionist Larry Sunaga, a bassist and guitarist, and a saxophonist, who instead of playing sax, composed all four lengthy pieces here, the results are amazing. Dense, dizzying, abstract and tribal, fuzzy and tripped out, long stretches of solo hand drum percussion, furious acid fuzz freakouts (courtesy of guitarist Kimio Mizutani, from Love Live Life+1, People, and other freaky Japanese '70s psych units), chanting and handclaps, all woven into an expansive, sprawling divine chunk of out there Afro-fuzz-psych-jazz-rock divinity.
Take the first track "Animals and Dawn", nearly 12 minutes long, and over those 12 minutes, the song veers and drifts through about ten distinctly different sounds and styles, all held together by the relentless African drum jam that runs through all four tracks. Beginning with what sounds like some strange low end synth buzz, those drums kick in, intense and hyper rhythmic, amazingly recorded, so on headphones it sounds like drums are all around you. That buzz, pulses and undulates beneath the frenzied drumming, and this goes on for almost 3 minutes, which is when some wild super distorted acid psych guitar swoops in, jagged and freaked out, spitting out soaring wah wah drenched buzz, before the bass joins in and the drums coalesce into a more recognizable groove, and the band nails it, heavy, slithery proto-metal, churning and pounding, eventually locking into a super technical prog workout, and then dropping out completely, again leaving just the drums, which are soon joined by hand clapping, and chanted African style vocals. Finally, for the last four minutes or so, the band unwinds a groovy jazzy prog workout, still underpinned by those same rhythms, but now the bass carries the groove, letting the guitar go wild, wild psychedelic leads all tangled up in great strange shapes over the groovy rhythm below. Eventually, the song is swallowed up by effects, reverb, delay, echo, as if the band were playing on some huge elevator, as we sit on the surface, listening as the band slips further and further into darkness. Holy shit. If this were a $30 single, that track alone would make this essential for folks into psychrock, proto-metal, free jazz, avant African music or really anyone into strange and fantastical sounds.
The second track, "Asking For Love", once again begins with African drums, the two percussionists, offering up wild tangled beats for nearly two minutes, until in swoops a weird synthy buzz, which quickly transforms into a seriously Led Zep worthy riff, the drums a strange counterpoint to the distinctly rock and roll riffage, and the vocals soaring and shouting, but this kick ass riff fades out only after a minute, and we're back to more dense drumming, Mesmerizing and hypnotic, locking into incredible grooves, veering off into off kilter time signatures here and there, but always returning to that groove. This continues until about one minute from the end, when the bass and guitars explode in a buzzing psychedelic freakout, the drums mirroring the intensity of the axes, locked into an ever expanding supernova of blown out sound, until the furious explosive finish. Whew.
Track three (on the original, the start of side 2) "Battle", begins with some straight up jazz prog, angular and complex, the drums and guitars locked tight, the whole thing convoluted and intricate, stopping suddenly after 30 seconds, at which point an African thumb piano plucks out a delicate music box melody, while in the background, other strange instruments scrape and thump and honk, eventually blossoming into a full on Afro-jam, the drums pounding away, male and female vocals, call and response over the mesmeric beats below, but again, this only lasts a few minutes before switching gears and launching right back into the angular prog that opened the track. This happens a couple more times. Long stretches of abstract percussion, plenty of buzz, and rattle, melodies played out on mysterious African instruments, separated by brief blasts of that �buzzing tangled prog, which is exactly how the track finishes off.
The closer, "Pygmy" begins with a groovy walking bass line, a cowbell heavy almost-funk rhythm, eventually some acidic wah wah guitar, and suddenly we're in some serious seventies, Blaxploitation soundtrack style jazz funk, the bass a constant presence, that groove irresistible, the vocals soulful, the percussion still busy and intense, beneath the more static rhythm driving the songs. The guitar and vocals get all tangled up, the vocals more sort of scatting, the guitar offering up jagged shards of high end, or unfurling soaring psychrock leads, the bass and guitar locking into step right at the end, for one final super tight psychprog finish.
It almost seems ridiculous to describe each song in detail, as that's only part of the story. All four tracks work together, leading into one another, offering up bits from pervious songs, giving up little sonic hints as to what might come later, and it's not just the arrangements, it's the feel, the mood, the vibe, and while mere description might make some of the songs sound schizophrenic, flipping back and forth from part to part, some parts lasting only a few seconds, nothing could be further from the truth. The composition here is as deft as the performance, the arrangement is simultaneously free and abstract, yet, tight and composed. The songs breathe and open up, drift and wander, but never seem to lose their direction, and the grooves ever present, even if on the surface the band seem to be drifting though inner space.
Uganda is truly unique, freaky and far out for sure, but most definitely an essential chunk of jazzy, proggy African Japanese psych rock bliss, organic, expansive, epic, rhythmic, space-y, proggy, heavy and funky!! If you've got Julian Cope's Japrocksampler book, you'll find it in his Top 50 list of Japanese psych essentials, right above the debut from Flower Travellin' Band.
As with all Tiliqua releases, gorgeously packaged. This one is housed in a full color miniature box, printed front and back, with a Japanese style obi of course, and inside extensive liner notes in both Japanese and English, with tons of photos. And it is limited of course, not sure how limited, but judging from how quick past Tiliqua releases fly out of here, better to be safe than sorry. And this is actually the first in a new Tiliqua series called Distorted Oriental Sensory Perceptions 1969-1978 focusing on "Obscure Japanese Psychedelic rock artifacts." We can hardly wait to see what they dig up next... there's a lot of others on that Japrocksampler list we'd love to hear...
First new record in six years from Toshiaki Ishizuka, a veritable underground drum legend in Japan. Having founded Japan's first radical political punk combo Zuno Keisatsu, as well as having played and recorded with Kan Mikami, Keiji Haino, Masayoshi Urabe and many others, you might be expecting some sort of super intense deconstructed psychrock drum damage rhythmic workout, but Ishizuka's solo percussion recordings are of an entirely different stripe. No blown out psychedelia, no punk rock pound, no splattery free jazz freakouts, instead, Drum Drama, Ishizuka's third record of solo percussion, is just that, dramatic, a dark and dreamy series of slow shimmering soundscapes, as much, if not more, about texture and mood than rhythm. The drum kit here is only a part of Ishizuka's palette, spread out in a very un-drum kit like manner between wide open expanses of huge gong swells, chiming bells, bowed metal, wood blocks and tinkling chimes. Incredibly deep and physical sounding, a slow burning series of drones and shimmers. Drum Drama contains three brand new tracks, as well as two redone pieces from his long out of print debut, but they flow perfectly. An organic drift of midnight ambience, punctuated by strange bits of percussive filigree, but spending most of its almost 40 minutes drifting through deep dark cavernous expanses of sound.
Huge low end reverberations underpin delicate drifting bells, all the sounds given ample time to spread out and flutter into the ether. All woven into moaning minimal melodies constructed from dense overtones and subtle shimmer. Here and there twinkling high end sparkles surface, super percussive skitter wraps around super melodic tom fills, occasionally sounding kind of like a super slow abstract free jazz "Wipeout", but played by the Starfuckers... just drums, spread way out across the soundfield, with some serious stereo panning, the fills swerving from one speaker to the other, a dizzying dreamy soundscape of percussive melody and strange rhythmic texture.
Elsewhere, the drones morph subtlely into super affected free jazz splatter, over a dense cacophony of clanging metal and industrial clatter, very kitchen sink with bits of cutlery, tea kettle scraping and all manner of shuffling and clinking and rumbling amidst smooth resonant muted drum fills.
The second half of the record is an even more subtle wash of undersea shimmer, thick rumblings build to propulsive percussive overload, just about as psychedelic as a room full of drums and pieces of metal can get. The record fades into a barely there drone, the hiss of the tape and the analog recording almost as loud as the simple subtle rhythmic shadings....
Hard to believe a record like this is the work of a drummer. And that there is even a drum kit involved at all. Shimmery percussive dronescapes, bowed metals, reverberating gongs, rolling metallic balls, little squalls of splattery free jazz shuffle, bits of martial drumming all woven into a lovely and zen like exploration of a dark and mysterious world of rhythm and sound. So good.
- MPEG stream: Ca
- MPEG stream: Mu
We dug the latest record from legendary Japanese drummer Toshiaki Ishizuka so much (we made it a record of the week in fact!), that we decided to track down more of his music, and managed to get a bunch of copies of this, 1999's In The Night.
Ishizuka is a legend in the Japanese underground music scene, having founded Japan's first radical political punk combo Zuno Keisatsu, as well as having played and recorded with Kan Mikami, Keiji Haino, Masayoshi Urabe and loads more.
But when he is behind the kit, armed with an arsenal of percussion and noisemakers, he is less of a drummer and more of a sonic alchemist, a soundscaper even, using the drum kit in very un-drummer-like ways. Most of In The Night is ambient, percussive, dreamy and abstract, but not necessarily rhythmic in the strictest sense of the term. Although at the same time this record is nothing BUT rhythm. Dense swirls of cymbal sizzle, brief squalls of tom toms swell and then fade, little bursts of tribal freakouts are underpinned by dizzyingly minute splatters of hand drums and cymbal crash, drums are rubbed and scraped, strange textures become near drones, hyena like chatter is somehow coaxed from drum heads, thick washes of metallic sound spreads out from vigorously beaten gongs, tiny melodies are plucked out on tinkling chimes, random bits of percussion lope and stutter, subtly intertwined with cymbal swish and strange resonant rumbles, even some occasional chanting vocals. One track does in fact feature Ishizuka seriously rocking the kit in full on freaked out free jazz mode, but even going for it with sticks, he still has a strange and subtle mastery of the kit. So cool. Essential for drummers, and the drum obsessed, but haunting and mysterious enough for anyone into dark droning rhythmic abstraction...
Turtable/sampler artist Otomo Yoshihide and sampler/sine wave technician Sachiko M. (both from Ground Zero, and who are also recording as Filament) are joined by percussionist/electronics guy Ichiaku Yoshimitsu in this new, very original trio. I know we talk a lot about something we perhaps inaccurately refer to as "minimalism" around here, but this recording is HYPER minimal, alternating between near-inaudible rumble and glass-shattering sine wave squeal, interrupted only by the very, very occasional digital crapout. This, their second album, was mixed by the guy from The Homosexuals!
Really nice packaging here -- the all-white embossed digipack is utterly gorgeous and tactile and very appropriate for the Zen-like simplicity of Japanese trio ISO's music. ISO consist of Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, and Yoshimitsu Ichiraku, all of whom are probably familiar to followers of the Japanese underground improv avant garde, with Otomo of course being the best known. Unlike the mayhemic turntable/sampler cutups of his former outfit Ground Zero, or the free jazz with which he's also identified, here Otomo and co. concentrate on the minimalist soundscapes typical of the emergent "onkyo" genre. It's subtle, barely-there electronics and percussion, enhanced by the ambient sound of the place where this was recorded, outside in a 500-year old temple garden. Apparently the members of the trio were positioned where they couldn't see one another, and it's hard to understand how they were able to hear each other either, unless they were playing at volumes much louder than what seems appropriate for playback at home. Yet the centrally located stereo mic has captured a oneness of sound, a delicate performance that is truly beautiful, not boring. Less stark and harsh than his Filament duo with Sachiko M, but more minimal than his larger Cathode ensemble, ISO is one of our favorites of Otomo's many projects and we're happy to have this 40 minute live document!
Domo arigato! Now here's a nice import vinyl reissue of this essential late '60s Japanese psychedelic rock record, the genius debut by 'Group Sounds-gone-gloomy' band the Jacks. Along with underground cult heroes Les Rallizes Denudes, The Jacks were another early, influential home-grown Japanese psych band, just ask Keiji Haino, whose outfit Fushitsusha covered the Jacks' classic "Marianne" on the second Tokyo Flashback volume.
With stinging Quicksilver psych guitar leads and melancholy vocals, the Jacks' legendary Vacant World, from 1968, is a truly gorgeous album of delicacy, darkness, and murk, that words like 'timeless' and 'dramatic' well describe. Its sparse, sad beauty makes it one of AQ overlord Allan's favorite '60s psych artifacts ever (although fellow AQ overlord Andee isn't as into it, but then, he doesn't really like Can or the Velvet Underground, either). Unlike other noted Japanese 'GS' bands like The Mops or The Challengers, these guys were not mainly, merely doing covers of the rock hits of the day from San Francisco and London, no. While Western garage and blues and psychedelic rock certainly shaped their sound, the Jacks seem uniquely Japanese, uniquely Jacks as well.
Though there's fuzz guitar on here, it's much more about atmosphere, moodiness, melody. The lyrics too, were apparently somewhat subversive, not that we'd know for sure. Totally recommended, especially to those of you into the more gentle and balladic side of more current Japanese psych acts like Ghost, LSD-march, Up-Tight, Nagisa Ni Te, etc.
Pressed on red vinyl, identical to its original issue, we're told.
Fans of current underground Japanese psych stuff (Acid Mothers Temple, Keiji Haino, Ghost, Nagisa Ni Te, etc.) who'd like to delve into the early psychedelic era precursors of those acts have been lucky lately, what with that Les Rallizes Denudes double cd finally having some availability, and the Flower Travellin' Band disc we recently recommended too. As we mentioned in our Rallizes review, The Jacks were the other crucial home-grown Japanese psych band, an admitted influence on Fushitsusha certainly, who once covered The Jacks' classic "Marianne". And we just managed to get a few imported copies of this 2-on-1 disc by 'em, released last year on the Japanese Shagadelic label. Not only does it have the ten tracks of their legendary "Vacant World" but also another 11 constituting their follow-up album "Super Session" (both 1968), plus three rare bonus tracks (two from singles, one live). The booklet provides discographical information and album/single art.
With stinging Quicksilver psych guitar leads and melancholy vocals, "Vacant World" is a truly gorgeous album of darkness and murk that words like delicate, dramatic, and timeless well describe. Its sparse, sad beauty makes it one of Allan's favorite '60s psych artifacts ever, though not everyone else here is so moved. Unlike other noted Japanese 'GS' bands like The Mops or The Challengers, these guys were not mainly, merely doing covers of the current rock hits of the day from San Francisco and London. While Western garage and blues and psychedelic rock certainly shaped their sound, The Jacks seem uniquely Japanese, uniquely Jacks as well.
Now for two warnings: The second album on here, Super Session, unfortunately does seem to delve into a more commerical, less special sound. It's as if some producer or record exec told 'em they had to be more like the competition. As a result, this does venture into a bar rock zone that's not at all on par with "Vacant World". And if you like saxophone, they get into that here too. A very different mood from the debut indeed. Oh well. But it's still cool to have, kitschy fun.
Ok, here's the second catch: we ONLY have 6 of these in stock right now, so if you need this, act fast...dunno when/if we can get more, unfortunately.
MPEG Download: "Marianne" [/audio/jacksmarianne.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Marianne" [/audio/jacksmarianne.m3u]
Release from the Japanese label Shiranui, which has developed a rather unique variant of drum & bass, which employs spastic asynchronous breakbeats accompanied with austere modernist jazz overtones of bowed metal, stand-up bass, and muted horns. Not at all dissimilar to the early Spymania releases by Squarepusher, though more dissonant and less groove-based.
So lovely is the work of Juppala Kaapio! That said, we must sadly report that the Japanese / Swiss, husband-and-wife duo have stated that Alpen Ocean will be their final album under the guise of Juppala Kaapio. Another project is in the works, and they are planning to unveil whatever this may be sometime in 2014. Many of the drone-clad works we champion hedge their bets with the power of the darkside; but there are plenty of choice examples of rapturous, celestial tones and holy minimalism that seek to enlighten rather than darken the consumers' mind. Juppala Kaapio's small catalogue of lovingly crafted minimalism figures somewhere between the summer solstice nature jams of the Finnish freak-folk types and the twinkling harmonics of Terry Riley and LaMonte Young. As for Alpen Ocean, a brightly hued psychedelia of a sunburst and snowblind tableau is rendered through the wide-eyed sense of awe and wonder after calmly sipping a cup of psilocybin mushroom tea. Carole Kojo's delicate falsettos waver into a meditative chorale through tape loops and delay amidst the slow kaleidoscopic arrangements of chiming bells, bowed gongs, glassy electronics, and a few pastoral field recordings thrown in for good measure. It all comes together into bright, rapturous drones that Juppala Kaapio's Hitoshi Kojo describes as "overlaid harmonies of a murmuring of trees, howling skies, roarings of the ocean and the gradual transformation that are accompanied by melodies which may remind you of migratory birds travelling across the sky on a lost ancient continent, or the dream of sea animals that are in eternal slumber in a ridge of mountains." Limited to a mere 300 copies!
Faux-Finnish, droning freak-folk from a Japanese sound artist and a Swiss chanteuse!
Juppala Kaapio is comprised of Hitoshi & Carole Kojo, whose lysergically bright-eyed concoctions draw from plenty of arcane and archaic folkloric traditions, and emerge as a beguiling, playful form of abstracted psychedelia. We've mentioned before that the name of the project is in fact Finnish, translating as Juppala Dwarf. What, who, or where Juppala is, we don't really know; but the aesthetic which the couple evoke is definitely akin to those adventurous Finns responsible for Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Islaja, and Kuupuu. Bells, flutes, hand percussion, cheap synths, violins, melodicas, vocal chants, and whatnot all go into the buzzing, wheezing thickets of sound that make up Juppala Kaapio's Animalia Corolla. With all of these instruments, the two create dense layerings of glistening textures and radiant drones that slip and slide around quite a bit, but always seem grounded in a fundamental harmonic tone that the two have plucked from the celestial spheres above. It's easy to situate these not only near those Finns, but also Taj Mahal Travellers at their most celebratory, LaMonte Young at his trippiest, and Fursaxa at her most narcotized. Really beautiful transcendent, modern-day ritualism!
We have here the art edition of Animalia Corolla, packaged in a neatly stitched felt sleeve and a screen-printed o-card to house the cd itself. This version is in an edition of ONLY 88 copies. We'll probably not be able to restock this, but we should have the regular version shortly.
Yes, that is faux-fur sprouting from this cd by Juppala Kaapio! As we mentioned before, this duo has a Finnish name and shares a Finnish freak-folk ritualism, but neither participant is Finnish. They are in fact the husband / wife pairing of Carole and Hitoshi Kojo, who bring extended technique vocals, bleary instrumentation from smoke & mirror, and lots of liquid nirvana electronic processing to the source material. Where their earlier works had 'jammed nature' along the Jewelled Antler / RV Paintings / Kemiallyset Ystavat axis with a wistful crunchiness, Rewound Groves marries the golden-summer glow of high-latitude pagan liturgy and the rapturous blur of Andrew Chalk's contributions to Organum or even some of the Taj Mahal Travellers broadcasts to nowhere. The vocals from both Hitoshi and Carole wax and wane on the opening number "Sewing Through Twigs" amongst a richly patterned undulation of glistening drones from what might be bells, might be flutes, might be guitars, might be the sparkle of twilight stars. Watery textures and backmasked tape bridges these sounds with the :zoviet*france: like haze of "Mycophiles And Pebbles" with spectral loops and holy mesmerism sprawled throughout the soft-focus layering of sound. Probably the best thing that Juppala Kaapio has released to date; and given the artwork this is justifiably limited to 123 copies. Brilliant.
Juppala Kaapio is a project with a Finnish name and Finnish credentials, but not a Finn amongst the lot. The parties responsible are the husband and wife duo of Carole and Hitoshi Kojo (the former Swiss and the latter Japanese by birth), but Hitoshi in particular has spent a fair amount of time in the Finnish hinterlands, and had made an appearance on the recent Kemialliset Ystavat album Ullakopalo. That said, Hitoshi has a small but impressive catalog of material recorded over the past decade under the moniker Spiracle. There, thick masses of texture piled on top of each other, creating thick drones with ghostly melodies flickering about, much like the archaic sounding recordings of Organum and the more compacted albums of Andrew Chalk. All of this culminated in the 2cd Ananta opus released back in 2009, and Hitoshi shifting his focus to the collaborative project Juppala Kaapio, whose name translates vaguely as the Juppala Dwarf. The two hint at the thickening drones of Spiracle, focusing more on a clattering, psychedelic ritualism that is more in keeping with all things Fonal - spluttering acoustic guitars, toy synths, Tony Conrad inspired viola drone, hand percussive tappings, prolonged flute tones, lots of bells, found forest objects, and vocalized mantras as if the personal soundtrack to a private ritual for wandering spirits who found themselves in a moss-covered cabin somewhere in the northern reaches of Finland basking in the midnight sun of an endless Arctic summer. Playful, fantastical, haunting, and thoroughly tripped out, Juppala Kaapio is highly recommended to any one keen on Jewelled Antler, Fursaxa, Taj-Mahal Travellers, Parson Sound, the freakiest end of the freak-folk spectrum, and of course the aforementioned Kemialliset Ystavat.
Dark, distorted solo guitar and voice from Tokyo psychedelic-scene veteran Kaneko Jutok (of Kousokuya), with bass and drums help on two tracks. It's blackness, sheer blackness. One for fans of Keiji Haino, no doubt (and his vocals are much easier to take than
From Osaka, Japan: Eastern psych-trance space rock. A treat for fans of Ghost and other mind-expanding PSF-label bands. Really nice, especially when leader Atsushi Kobayashi is playing his zurna (double-reed horn).
Get your dancin' shoes polished up and ready to go 'cause Kaito (aka Japanese producer Hiroshi Watanabe) has offered up over 75 minutes of sleek and sharply executed trance-meets-house grooves. There's all-out thumpin' bass rumpshakers to total gonna-love-you-downtempo numbers and a super spacy atmospheric closing track mysteriously called "Awakening (Beatlesstrumental)". This is his first full length, but please note, it compiles his three previous 12"s with a few new tracks.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Obscure, modern-day Japanese psychedelic rock band, kind of like Ghost but perhaps folkier and poppier. With traditional Japanese elements as well. Nice.
Heralded as supposedly the first Japanese female singer-songwriter, Sachiko Kanenobu's debut solo outing from 1972, Misora (Beautiful Sky), has an aura of legend. A hard-working presence in the burgeoning Osaka folk scene in the '60s, Sachiko worked for record labels and various bands before striking out on her own. Since it was rare for a woman to be playing her own songs, she quickly managed a record deal. But her love affair with American music critic, Paul Williams, forced her to decide to move to America three months before Misora was released. Without her in Japan to promote it, the record sank without a trace. While in America, she tried to revive her career with the help, of all people, sci-fi writer Phillip K. Dick (!!!), who had become friends with the couple through a piece by Williams for Rolling Stone. Dick, a longtime music obsessive, had always wanted to produce a female songwriter, but unfortunately died of a stroke before that could take place. Her major revival didn't occur until the early '90s when musicians from the buzzing Shibuya-kei scene, such as Cornelius, Takako Minekawa and Kenji Ozawa began citing Misora as a major influence and Misora as a favorite record. The music here is soft and dreamy reminiscent somewhat of Joni Mitchell but with her own innocent flair along with nice arrangements of flute and guitar. One can definitely trace Sachiko's influence on the dreamy sounds of Japanese female vocalists Takakao Minekawa, Tujiko Noriko, and Mineko Itakura from Angel'n Heavy Syrup. Beautiful!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Kahimi's ultra-sweet baby doll vocals twit and twitter around a Gainesbourg/Bacharach-sque melodious stew. Much like a super amped up Pizzicato Five. Lots of Momus here (words, music, production, etc), but Add 'N' to (X), Stereo-Total, and Buffalo Daughter also put in their two bits worth. Soaring pop on a grand scale. Warning: may induce sugar shock.
Super saccharinely sweet female vocals from this woman who has been called a female Cornelius. He guests on this record, as does Momus.
So imagine you're a longhaired Japanese hippy freak in the mid-'70s. You've been grooving to the cosmic sounds coming out of Germany on import LPs for the past few years, as well as digging the homegrown stuff too. Taj Mahal Travellers, Foodbrain, Speed Glue & Shinki, Magical Power Mako, yeah. But now you're looking for something even MORE potent. And primitive. And peculiar. Thankfully, on a visit to the Tokyo equivalent of Aquarius Records, you discover this release by a tiny Osaka based record label called Voice. And you, the jaded Japanese hippy, once again your mind is blown!
And thankfully for those of us not lucky enough to be born Japanese hippies in the '70s, this mind-blowingness has now been reissued on cd by Phoenix, joining that label's reissue roster of other crucial Japanese '70s prog/psych like Flower Travellin' Band's Satori and The Far East Family Band's Nipponjin (reviewed here last list). This one, if you're curious, earned the 19th spot on the Top 50 list found in Julian Cope's book Japrocksampler.
It's record by a mysterious outfit known as Karuna Khyal, entitled Alomoni 1985. We're not sure why it's called that, in fact, we're not sure of much about this, not even the year it was first released ('75? '76?), except that it's freakin' far out and totally amazing. And that they're probably the same folks who recorded another awesome album under the name Brast Burn, that we assume Phoenix will also get around to reissuing (they'd both been previously put out on cd some years ago by Paradigm Disc, that's how come we're familiar with them, but those reissues are long gone).
It consists of two side-long tracks, each around 24 minutes of hard to describe insanity. The first one starts off like some sort of krautrock meets Native American pow-wow, stoned vocal chant accompanied by harmonica blowing and slide guitar, flowing into a more murky zone of Can-like groove, with relaxed, rhythmic percolations from hand percussion, caressed by free improv piping. Then about half-way through the track, it takes a plunge into proto-isolationist drones and distortion, with backwards tape manipulations and echoing FX... later still, the throbbing, nodding pulse is adorned by more mumbled Beefheartian blues babble. By the end of the track, it's a looping phantasmagoria of voice, electronics, harmonica, like a backporch Philip Jeck jam! Ok?
Then track two begins. Even further out, in a black void... a beat starts... steady... then it quickens, slows, stops and starts again amidst a sinister swooshing swirl of disembodied voices and electronic detritus. Wow. Weird. Bad trip territory! It builds and builds, with kazoo-like sounds buzzing and blapping over a repetitive martial rhythm violently strummed or drummed on some sort of distended, elastic instrument, a bass heavy chunk-chunk-chunk drilling deep like a trepanist's tool, through your skull into your soon to be free brain. Eventually it morphs into twisted harmonica-blowing jam, hypnotic and disturbed, voices hooting and mewling and laughing and mantrically chanting... The second half of this track is total bedlam, but still utterly hypnotic.
Good grief! We have to assume the Boredoms are familiar with this record. And doubtless Kawabata Makoto would give his left arm, or even his beard, to get his Acid Mothers Temple to sound this far out.
Limited edition of 1000 copies, in a cardstock "wallet" sleeve like the label's other releases.
Japanese bass player (with some help from friends) takes on the US invasion of Iraq! That's right, the new album from electric four-stringer Kato Hideki (Ground Zero, Death Ambient, Dying Ground, Bass Army, etc.) is an instrumental concept album taking a critical view of Bush's Iraq war and occupation. We're probably in full agreement with Kato's views, though the problem with making INSTRUMENTAL music to "say" something non-musical is evident -- other than guessing from the song titles, you wouldn't know without being told what the heck Green Zone was "about". However, Kato's concern with the situation in Iraq is what's on his mind and so why not use it to give purpose to his art? The resulting music is definitely powerful and passionate and now we know why. Political ideas aside, Green Zone is definitely the sort of thing that fans of Japanese bands like Ground Zero and Ruins will enjoy, heavy-duty prog power trio skronk from professionals. These slow burning build-ups of distorted grinding guitar over Magmoid bass burps and hard-hitting drumming are gonna also appeal to anyone into the likes of Gone and Stinking Lizaveta, we'd imagine.
Like most Doubtmusic titles, packaged in a nice digipack featuring a distinctive die-cut hole in the cover.
Trace Of Voices by Japanese composer Masaya Kato is the latest collection of blissful ambience from local label Time Released Sound, who most readers of the aQ list should now most likely be well familiar with, their near monthly release schedule overflowing with all manner of hushed experimentation and dreamily atmospheric psychedelia. This new one might be the most pensive and minimal of the bunch, mostly piano, draped over all manner of field recordings, the sound cinematic, but not sweeping or grandiose, instead, intimate and contemplative, chimes tinkle delicately over the sound of whipping wind, motorcycles drive by in the distance, sounds rumble and murmur, conjuring up some overcast, autumnal otherworld. The piano delicate and crystalline, drifting hauntingly through a haze of hum and thrum, sometimes fading into the ether, leaving the listener lost in this other soundworld, but soon those sounds surface again, unfurling aching melodies, and fluttering chords, airy and ephemeral.
Here and there the sound does grow more animated, and distinctly Eastern, others sound like broadcasts from another time, another world, but even then, it all happens beneath a patina of crackle and thrum, everything hazy and gorgeously washed out. The bulk of the record though is spent wandering empty streets, lit by guttering flames, the backdrop a broken toothed smile of skyline, or laying on grassy hilltops, in the shadows of storm clouds, yet to let loose, the sky stretched out in endless smears of slate grey, all of these sounds crumbling, decaying before our very ears, from elegy to threnody, a dreamlike melancholia that is easy to get lost in. A perfect rainy day record, that sounds like it was actually recorded on a rainy day. So lovely.
And as always, the packaging is lovely as well. The deluxe version, limited to just 65 copies, is presented as handmade, Japanese style scroll and calendar, with beautiful photos by photographer Irina Urumova. Made from cloth book binding paper and sporting a sheet of Japanese wallpaper, there's a string, so it can be hung on the wall, and features a pocket housing the disc, a hand printed insert, in a sleeve crafted from an antique Japanese book of floral drawings. The calendar comes in a hand stamped/sealed envelope made from block printed wallpaper, and inside is all sorts of extra goodies including gingko leaves. And fear not, there's also a handsome standard version, limited to 150 copies, which comes in a full color digipak.
Trace Of Voices by Japanese composer Masaya Kato is the latest collection of blissful ambience from local label Time Released Sound, who most readers of the aQ list should now most likely be well familiar with, their near monthly release schedule overflowing with all manner of hushed experimentation and dreamily atmospheric psychedelia. This new one might be the most pensive and minimal of the bunch, mostly piano, draped over all manner of field recordings, the sound cinematic, but not sweeping or grandiose, instead, intimate and contemplative, chimes tinkle delicately over the sound of whipping wind, motorcycles drive by in the distance, sounds rumble and murmur, conjuring up some overcast, autumnal otherworld. The piano delicate and crystalline, drifting hauntingly through a haze of hum and thrum, sometimes fading into the ether, leaving the listener lost in this other soundworld, but soon those sounds surface again, unfurling aching melodies, and fluttering chords, airy and ephemeral.
Here and there the sound does grow more animated, and distinctly Eastern, others sound like broadcasts from another time, another world, but even then, it all happens beneath a patina of crackle and thrum, everything hazy and gorgeously washed out. The bulk of the record though is spent wandering empty streets, lit by guttering flames, the backdrop a broken toothed smile of skyline, or laying on grassy hilltops, in the shadows of storm clouds, yet to let loose, the sky stretched out in endless smears of slate grey, all of these sounds crumbling, decaying before our very ears, from elegy to threnody, a dreamlike melancholia that is easy to get lost in. A perfect rainy day record, that sounds like it was actually recorded on a rainy day. So lovely.
And as always, the packaging is lovely as well. The deluxe version, limited to just 65 copies, is presented as handmade, Japanese style scroll and calendar, with beautiful photos by photographer Irina Urumova. Made from cloth book binding paper and sporting a sheet of Japanese wallpaper, there's a string, so it can be hung on the wall, and features a pocket housing the disc, a hand printed insert, in a sleeve crafted from an antique Japanese book of floral drawings. The calendar comes in a hand stamped/sealed envelope made from block printed wallpaper, and inside is all sorts of extra goodies including gingko leaves. And fear not, there's also a handsome standard version, limited to 150 copies, which comes in a full color digipak.
"Extreme Onction" is the first collaborative production between Acid Mothers Temple's guru Makoto Kawabata and France's Jean-François Pauvros. Kawabata has led the Japanese collective on some wild trips through psychedelic mayhem and eerie dronescapes, and Pauvros has a number of releases of improv guitar work on Spalax. These two have revisted the guitar isolationist sounds that found their way on Sentrax and Subharmonic in mid '90s: thick guitar reverberations taking on the challenge of creating a dark ambient music entirely out the guitar (and of course a shit load of effects). Just as Buckethead (he's got a bucket on his head - that's funny) and Bill Laswell had the ability to produce some amazingly expressive and dark atmospherics, Kawabata & Pauvros have succeeded in getting their guitars to speak with a bleak torpor. But similar to their predecessors, Kawabata & Pauvros want the listener to know that they are masters at their instrument and can shove 30 million notes in less than 10 seconds. Wow. What virtuosity.
