The latest from Japanese turntable/guitar experimentalist, composer, and sometimes jazz musician Otomo Yoshihide (if he needs an introduction, this isn't the place to start). "Ensemble Cathode" is a beautifully packaged cd -- anyone who's seen the Improvised Music From Japan box set knows about their nice cardboard mini-lp style cd sleeves -- featuring the works "Cathode #3", "Cathode #4" and "Cathode #5", all lengthy (14 to 22 minute) pieces composed by Otomo but allowing for much improvisation from the musicians. Otomo's Tzadik releases "Cathode" and "Anode" have already explored this idea -- small groups of musicans, some playing traditional Japanese instruments (in a modern context, as with Nishi Yoko's "prepared 17-string koto"), some with jazz instruments, others with electronics: samplers, contact mics, and turntables, in a structured improv setting. This Ensemble Cathode disc is as gorgeous and adventurous as those others, full of rumbling percussion, bowed cymbal drone, ethnic coloration, crackling noise, and piercing sine wave tones... The latter courtesy of frequent Otomo Yoshihide collaborator Sachiko M.
Also appearing are Taku Sugimoto (a wonderful, wonderful electric guitar abstractionist), percussionist Ichiraku Ysohimitsu (of the Acid Mothers Temple!), Andrea Neumann (playing "inside piano"), Akiyama Tetzui (who plays a turntable without records), and many others. A quiet, quite lovely listen, with many carefully wrought textures.
Imagine some gorgeous, high energy free jazz (including compositions by Eric Dolphy and Gerry Mulligan) melded with electronic drones, sine wave tones, and some Merzbow-style noise. That's what our favorite Japanese new music guru (turntablist/experimentalist/jazzbo Otomo Yoshihide) delivers with this new album on John Zorn's Tzadik label. Otomo and four other stellar players from the venerable Japanese free jazz scene are joined by none other than Merbow's Masami Akita and frequent Otomo collaborator Sachiko M (she's the one playing the "empty sampler w/ sine wave"). Fans who're already into his work with Ground Zero, ISO, Filament, and all the rest will have an idea of what this sounds like if we say it's a cross between the amazing Ground Zero "Plays Standards" disc and the minimalist clicks & drones of his more recent ISO project. Also it follows on nicely from his previous Tzadik release "Cathode", mixing the acoustic and electronic elements as on that disc. In other words, Otomo fans, it's essential! For those who have yet to explore the man's work (and who like jazz!) this would be a great starting place.
There's moody parts with record crackle and smokey sax soloing, and then there's full-on intense combustions of improv interplay, total electronics/jazz freakouts. Here's a more detailed rundown: the opening title track is a ten and a half minute exercise in tension: skittering drums, suspenseful noir film bass lines, slowly ascending distorted guitar feedback, topped with badass horn interplay straight outta "The Shape of Jazz to Come", and layered with ear piercing high frequency sine wave tones, courtesy of Sachiko M. "Spin" is a delirious hyperfrenetic bebop jam with subtle blasts of noise and space age guitar jabs that whirlpools into an ending that has to be heard to be believed! The two Dolphy numbers covered are "Les" and "Serene". Then the album concludes with an epic twenty two minute track that begins with the sweet sound of Gerry Mulligan's "Night Lights" and transforms into the beautifully abstract, Otomo-composed "Density". The whole disc is fantastic, beautiful stuff, something we're sure was conceived partly in tribute to a young Otomo's 1970s Japanese free jazz heroes, who no doubt would approve. Brilliant and highly recommended.
In recent weeks, we've reviewed two great albums by Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra, which is a large ensemble led by the well-known Japanese turntable/guitar experimentalist, as you can tell from their name. But here, on this 2005 release from the same label, Otomo scales things back, to just himself and a guitar (which you also probably figured out already from the title), acoustic on some tracks, electric on others. As with those ONJO discs, there's a blend of "outside" stuff here as well as melodic jazz standards. It's just as eclectic and interesting, just more intimate, and maybe in some ways more intense. Certainly Otomo goes to extremes here, delving into the noisy, guitar-as-weapon danger zones, side-by-side with tracks of utterly lovely and relaxed mood-setting. For instance, the song "Rig" here is a face-melting distortion assault with many sharp edges and pointy corners. Skronk barely begins to describe it. That it settles into droning grind towards the end of the piece is something of a respite. Conversely, just a few tracks later, there's the delicate, dulcet "Mood Indigo" of Duke Ellington, in Otomo's hands a reverent, late-night reverie. Elsewhere, "Cylinder" is another heavy-duty slab of drone/skronk, while on the prettier side of things, there's acoustic Otomo solo versions of material also done by the ONJO, like "Misty", "Lonely Woman", and Otomo's own "Theme From Canary"...
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Two short sides of sound collage from Tokyo's masterful sample artist and leader of the late great Ground Zero. These pieces are made up of short sound samples of almost any instrument imaginable: saxophone blasts, cello strokes, short metallic chord bursts, single plucks of the guitar as well as the noises made by hand movements all set to a metronomic sampled drumbeat. Quite interesting, but not a fully realized work. If Otomo chooses to continue this process, it could potentially have wonderful results.
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Otomo Yoshihide's new group, the accurately named New Jazz Quintet, debuts on this disc, which includes both the soundtrack to Ian Kerkhof's film "Shadondama Elegy" (sorry, we don't know anything more about the film) and additional material recorded by more or less the same musicians. Japanese turntablist and guitarist Otomo of course is best known for his seminal jazz/sampling group Ground Zero, as well as for his equally exciting recent work in electronic minimalism with ISO. Plus his numerous collaborations and solo performances! Anyway, his new group (featuring members of ISO, Altered States, Ground Zero, Rovo, etc.) certainly live up to the "jazz" part of their name on this disc, playing mostly music composed by Otomo, plus a Victor Jara tune.
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Two twenty minute pieces for turntables, mixer and hard disk recorder, by the leader of Japanese jazz/noise/sampling outfit Ground Zero. Amazing cut-up symphonies of parts and particles of hundreds of impossible to recognize sound sources: cartoon music to car alarms to straight ear-splitting noise.
Solo turntable medicine from Otomo of Ground Zero. "1 minute memory tranquilizer x 60 capsules. Dosage 10 capsules 1/2 hour before sleep, repeat every night if required. Composition: Each capsule contains 1 minute, concentrated 1 vinyl experimental record. Caution: This may cause drowsiness, if affected, do not drive or operate machinery." Hong Kong import.
You'd almost like to think that with a title like Turntables and Computers, this would turn out to have been made with rocks and sticks. But no, the title is indeed a very literal labelling of this disc's musical contents. Otomo Yoshihide is one of Japan (and the world's) top turntable experimentalists, whilst his countryman Nobukazu Takemura is a laptop jockey of some reknown. Together they craft a humming, droning, pulsating, glitchy bleepathon. It sounds like a field recording from some sorta sci-fi birdhouse, with a radio on in the background. Voices from Otomo's vinyl records drift in and out of the mix, as if from persons lost amid the pleasantly noisy chaos being created. It's one long 46-minute track, the result of a live improv session. Apparently it was the first time these two had ever worked (or played) together. What they came up with is probably closer to the less pop, more abstract aspects of the Powerbook electronica that Nobukazu is known for, intersecting with the minimalist electronic rather than jazz side of Otomo's ouvre. By the end it gets into mindshredding noise territory, a real nice finale to a disc that visits much quiet beauty as well.
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What serious jazz ensemble will you find playing versions of compositions by Wayne Shorter and Eric Dolphy, AND Otomo Yoshihide and Jim O'Rourke? Well, Otomo Yoshihide's own New Jazz Quintet of course. Far from the turntables-and-noise shock tactics of his seminal Ground Zero group, Otomo's New Jazz Quintet is much more on the "inside" of jazz tradition, and although you can expect some surprises, this disc, recorded live in Tokyo March 2002, is fairly straightforward compared to the Quintet's two previous releases on John Zorn's Tzadik label. No guest vocals from Phew, no electronics from Merzbow or Sachiko M. No, instrumentally this is indeed nothing but a jazz quintet: Otomo's on guitar, with four of the best and brightest from the Japanese underground jazz scene on saxophones, bass, and drums. The experimentation (with noise, with pop) of those two Tzadik albums gives way here to Otomo and co.'s abiding love for serious jazz, full of color, beauty, feeling, and powerful playing. Amid the two jazz standards assayed here, Otomo's compositions, and the O'Rourke piece, fare quite well. Otomo's twenty minute "Flutter" (from the Quintet's first Tzadik disc) is one of the disc's highlights, in fact, jumping off from its melodic, noirish motif into an electric build-up and blow-out of massive proportions. The Shorter and Dolphy pieces are handled with energy and respect, and then Otomo's NJQ winds up the disc with their 18 minute take on O'Rourke's "Eureka" -- achingly sad and pretty, reaching densely layered heights of group improv, then subsiding into a lonely finale. Very nice, actually!
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Since his youthful days spent hanging out in Japan's unique jazz listening cafes in the '70s, Otomo Yoshihide has been a major jazz fanatic, into all its forms from the most traditional standards to freeform energy blowouts. Although his own music has ranged from noisy turntable sound-collage to minimal 'onkyo' drones, no matter how experimental Otomo has gotten his interest in jazz has always been there. His most famous project, Ground Zero, was evidence of this, especially on their classic Plays Standards album. In recent years Otomo formed ONJQ: Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet, teaming up with some of the most talented 'cats' in the Tokyo scene to play jazz both straight and surprising. Tails Out is the Quintet's new album and like their previous releases for Tzadik and DIW it mixes both originals and original takes on other people's songs, starting off very jazz-like with Charlie Haden's "Song For Che" before Otomo's own "Reducing Agent" introduces acid rock guitar into the proceedings. Other cover versions include songs by James Blood Ulmer, Charles Mingus, and the Beatles -- a real nice instrumental "Strawberry Fields Forever"! Some hints of 'onkyo' electronics crop up in their Mingus tune and continue into the disc's final Otomo-penned thirteen-minute title track. With beauty, grace, power, and excitement, the ONJQ's love of their source material is obvious and inspired.
First ever collaboration between the long-running (since the '70s!) Swiss experimental duo Voice Crack and Japan's master of free-jazz turntablism, Otomo Yoshihide. Voice Crack specialize in the use of "cracked everyday electronics" (imagine raiding the local Radio Shack and turning your kitchen into a living nest of crackle and hum), and Otomo has been investigating minimalist electronic soundscapes of late. Together they've created a quiet, detailed sound-world of electro-acoustic improvisation. Quite nice, fans of both should be pleased.
Japanese ambient psych trio featuring Kohji Nishino of Ghost and Overhang Party on bass, Takiko Yoshizaki on synth, and Iwao Yamazaki on drums. Yamazaki explains: "In 1994 I built unusual speakers for a solo exhibition. They could only put out at extremely low volume, but the sound they produced was totally pure. I connected our instruments to them to test how they would sound. The results are recorded here." Watery electronics, sparse drumming, gorgeous melodic bass tones... restrained, quiet beauty. Then an eventual upsurge of energy, into dronier, heavier territory. Perfect for a darkened room. Quite nice.
Finally, the complete studio recordings of this legendary Japanese psych band, available all together, at an affordable price, and including a handful of bonus tracks, as well as their unreleased final recording session - which means even all you folks who already have these records, just might need to buy them again!
Formed in the early nineties, and originally featured on several early PSF Tokyo Flashback compilations, Overhang Party mainman Fukuoka Rinji (who also runs the Pataphysique label, which originally released most of the band's recordings) continued to make records until the early 2000's, with a handful of releases over the years (Overhang Party 1, 2 and 4 are included here, 3 was live), the ever shifting lineup of Overhang Party featuring members of Fushitsusha, LSD March, Kousokuya, High Rise, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, which should most definitely give the uninitiated an idea of Overhang Party's sound. Which is incredibly varied, from tripped out psychedelic abstractions, to full bore heavy psych freakouts.
Overhang Party's 1993 debut, starts out all spacey and minimal, scattered percussion, abstract string scrape, strange blurred melodies, distorted croons, weird animal sounds, and wild blurts of drum splatter, before launching into a dense noisy guitarnoise freeform blowout, swirling clouds of grinding, howling heaviness, laced with wild loose drumming, mostly buried in the mix, the sound more Sunroof! or Skullflower than Fushitsusha, but the next track finds Overhang Party firmly in Les Rallizes Denudes, smoldering psychedelic balladry, wailed vocals, woozy swirls of guitar thrum, simple propulsive drumming, and of course some guitar freakout, but also some hushed drift, replete with falsetto vox! The rest of one splits the difference between freak out and dramatic broody ballad, the bonus track, a 14 minute epic recorded live on KFJC in 1999, a gorgeous tranced out psychguitar blowout!
The second record, originally released the next year, starts out all riffy, and immediately launches into some heady psychedeia, that's not that far removed from classic Hawkwind, chugging, churning, soaring and epic, the vocals much more polished and pronounced, and of course plenty of heart-of-the-sun guitar shreddery. The whole of two tends toward the riffier, more melodic, more polished, but also more rocking, almost all the tracks smoldering slow building space-psych epics, culminating in some fierce mega guitar jams, with one track slipping into something more pastoral and dreamy, while the bonus track here, another live track, is like a more melodic version of the album songs proper, jangly and dreamy and lilting, but with some crunchy riffs, dramatic vox, and some spiraling tangled super distorted leads. A definitely Les Rallizes feel for sure.
For disc three, we skip ahead to 1996's Overhang Party IV, since three is a live disc, and these are the complete STUDIO recordings. IV starts off with piano, pounding away in a squall of guitar shred and cymbal shimmer, the sound immediately launching into something distinctly proggy, sounding a lot like seventies prog, but with some extra guitar, in fact, a LOT of extra guitar, which is what transforms prog into heavy psych, the song mostly one part, that builds and builds and builds. But much of IV tends toward the proggy, "Barcelona" barely getting psychedelic, but then when we get to "The The Ship Sank" which while still more moody and melodic and proggy, is seriously majestic, and heavy, the guitars distort and howl, sounding like some sort of slow burn post rock intro, expanded to a droned out epic. "Winter Lovers" gets downright Hawkwindy, before slipping right into the soaring psychedelic prog-pop of "Mirror". "G House Blues" is the live bonus track from the first disc, and in the studio, it's somehow way more abstract, a heaving wall of layered guitars, buzzing and distorted, swirling textures, pretty free form and avant, total experimental guitar freakout bliss for sure. The bonus track is total Stooges / Hawkwind heaviness, all chugging riffs, and wild wah wah guitar shred, and super dramatic soaring vox. Maybe the heaviest jam here.
The holy grail of this set though might be the final disc, the group's last ever recordings, previously unreleased, done between 2003 and 2005. The opener is all acoustic guitar and woozy bass, dreamy jangle, and keening melodies, a seriously classic rock vibe here, softly crooned vocals, a minimal amount of psyche guitar, more a sort of dreamy laid back drift. In fact the awesomely titled "Wolf, Scorpion, Earth Fang" we sort of expected to be a scorcher, especially with its buzzing guitar intro, but instead it's another psychedelic ballad, albeit one with plenty of psych guitar. It's not really until "Pyramid", that things get really rolling, a dirgey slab of buzzing heaviness, more dramatic vox, over wah guitar, and pounding drums, swirling and VERY psychedelic. "Marseille" is another broody ballad, but one that features some wild shredding psych guitar freakout, and again, has a serious Les Rallizes feel. "Who Are You" is a woozy dramatic dirge, rife with keening melodies, awkward English vox, and yeah, plenty more buzzing howling guitars. The bonus track "Duo Improvisation", is just what it sounds like, guitars and drums, freeform, spaced out and spacious, the drums jazzy and free, the guitar emotional and intense, would have loved if this jam went on for another 30 minutes, but as it is, it's a seriously potent six minutes.
So great. And perfect timing what with the recent spate of Les Rallizes reissues. Anyone who has been obsessing over that group, owes it to themselves to check these guys out. You will not be disappointed.
Most definitely essential listening for fans of Fushitsusha, Flower Travellin' Band, Taj Mahal Travellers, LSD March, Kousokuya, Les Rallizes Denudes, Miminokoto, High Rise, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Magical Power Mako, and even Acid Mothers Temple.
Comes in a deluxe TEN panel fold out color coordinated digipak, not much in the way of liner notes, but there is a booklet, with credits for each record, as well as lyrics.
This underground Tokyo psych rock ensemble presents an extensive and expensive but freakin' great live document, recorded at shows from '95 to '99, including two tracks from their 1999 US tour that for some reason they couldn't fit on either of the two cds in
Woah! Talk about an unexpected, yet killer collaboration. In this corner, arctic electronic experimentalists Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen (aka Pan Sonic), from Finland. In the other corner, blackclad Emily The Strange lookalike and psych guitar shaman Keiji Haino, from Tokyo, Japan. Both parties know a thing or two about manipulating electricity, noise, and drone. You'll hear plenty of that here, the Vainio/Vaisanen/Haino trio recorded live in Berlin, November 2007.
Heck, we're always happy hearing Haino in any setting, but it turns out that Pan Sonic are particularly perfect to accompany him, they bring the darkness too... note that it's usually Haino's unique presence that makes itself felt most prominently in any collaboration with which he's been involved (Boris, Merzbow, Sitaar Tah, Zeitkratzer, etc.), and such is the case here, even the title is obviously Haino-esque. And nothing else sounds like his occasional, anguished vocals, which when they appear here, are in stark organic contrast to the digital, mechanical machinations of his co-conspirators Pan Sonic.
Guttural throat-torn outbursts from Haino screech forth over palpitating drum machine clicks and throbbing low-end pulses. Sizzling buzz and whirr wreathe the proceedings. Haino's whale call guitar feedback breaches the dark void, Tibetan monks are channelled. The dynamics shift from mysterious quiet groans and beautiful keening drones to loud, out and out distorted glitch/guitar warfare... It's been a loooong time since there's been an album from Haino's band Fushitsusha, but this is the next best thing!
Well, we dunno if you can download a blackhole but basically there's equivalent blackness and gravity on this compact disc, that we'd be happy to sell to you. And unlike any download, it's housed in nice Stephen O'Malley designed digipack packaging with the artists' names in spot varnish on the cover.
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Japanese guitar, bass and drums trio featuring our favorite drummer ever -- Yoshida (of Ruins fame) and it's just what we'd expect: short, fast songs with plenty of on-a-dime changes and ROCK.
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This is probably the weirdest band on Howling Bull. Chaotic, off kilter hardcore, mixed with sloppy funk and all out Boredoms-ish weirdness.
Maybe we shouldn't be so hard on the Acid Mothers collective for being so prolific. You and I go do our jobs everyday, and no one complains as long as we do a good job, and are productive and successful, right? So until AMT start peddling utter crap, maybe we should give them a break. It just so happens that their job is to explore the cosmos with spaced out synths and swirling rattlesnake guitars, and to spread wild, freaked out psychedlic love. And they continue to do it better than most of their contemporaries. It just gets frustrating from a fans point of view to try and keep up. So here we have the third or fourth AMT release this month (seriously), this time it's record number two from the Pardons, the guitar/synth duo of AMT frontline Cotton Casino and Higashi Hiroshi. And it's quite a gorgeous affair. Any traces of pychedelia dissipate into an expansive and spacious dreamscape of tinkling shimmering chimes, spacy dreamy ambience, gently finger picked guitars, reverbed crystalline tinkle, theremin like vocal trills, and soaring distant operatic vocals, like wisps of smoke floating lazily through the air. Beautifully serene and gorgeously otherworldly.
If you're looking to get to dreamboat island there really is no better way than to go with the Pastels & Tenniscoats as your dreamy and breezy ship captains. We're not sure how Glasgow legends Pastels and Tokyo's Tenniscoats linked up but it makes complete perfect sense as they each have perfected soft and soothing twee escapades like no one else. Pastels have been around the block, beginning in the 1980's where they helped usher in a new refreshing sound that would influence folks across the globe and plant the seeds for labels like K records. Tenniscoats have been around for the last few years and ever since we heard their pastoral and blissful take on hushed pop we became big fans. Our love of them only increased when their singer Saya performed at an instore here at AQ with Satomi of Deerhoof in their side project OneOne. This is truly a collaborative effort with members from both bands playing on every track and vocals trade off quite nicely and equally between each group, but all together the sounds of each band mesh with each other so well and with such ease that nothing feels forced about the combination of these two groups. So perfect that the artwork inside features a picture of the groups together sitting on such lush green grass, as we always want to be laying in some scenic peaceful park starring into the sky when we hear the dreamy sounds these groups create. Dreamboat island, we have arrived!
1971 strikes again! Here's a new cd reish of this beautifully freaky album by a Japanese "Buddhist-psych" band called People, featuring guitarist Kimio Mizutani (who played with Love Live Life + 1, Hiro Yanagida, and others, and did a solo album called A Path Through Haze). There's monk-like chanting and resounding gongs, field recordings of birds and street sounds, and even, strangely enough, samples from soulful psych-funk producer David Axelrod's classic 1968 album Song Of Innocence. And of course heavy wah wah guitar action. The album is a real 'trip', much of it indeed very ceremonial-sounding, venturing from blissful grooves with tick-tock rhythms ("Shomyo Part 2") and placid, lovely droniness ("Prayer Part 1") to sheer pounding electric fuzz riffage laced with screams of orgasmic ecstasy ("Prayer Part 2"). The puzzling use of those lush, orchestral Axelrod samples on the first and last tracks just helps to make this somehow both very much of its time and also way ahead of it (since Axelrod is heavily sampled by folks today as well!). Quite recommended.
The final installment in Tiliqua's Erotic Oriental Sunshine series of Japanese erotic music from the sixties and seventies (the fifth of five!). We reviewed Kokotsu No Sekai from Japanese sexy action heroine Ike Reiko a while back, Kuwabara Yukiko To Anata from Japanese "Play Girl" Kuwabara Yukiko not long after that, and then Modae No Heya from seventies bondage / S&M queen Naomi Tani, music recorded and released in 1979 to commemorate her retirement from the world of porn. And most recently Tokyo Emmanuelle Fujin - Amai Yoru No Tameiki from legendary porn actress Taguchi Kumi. The final installment is, according to the label, perhaps the rarest of the bunch, with original copies fetching thousands of dollars, and to our ears, it's also maybe the best of the bunch, certainly the weirdest.
For those just discovering the wonderful world of Iroke Kayoyoku for the first time, it's a sort of loungy exotica, equal parts Les Baxter and Ennio Morricone, a bastardized version of a more popular Asian music of the time, a funky, groovy, soulful soundtrack music, but sexed up with chanteuse like crooning, and most important of all, an amazing array of moaning and groaning and cooing and giggling, very playful and silly and sexy.
Originally released in 1971 (in keeping with Allan's 1971 music theory, see about a hundred other reviews...), Petite M'Amie was in fact the nickname of Mari Keiko, who could very well be responsible for the very first iroke record, which perhaps explains the relative lack of nudity on the sleeve, Girl Friend - Baby Doll was the seed, from which would sprout a whole genre of sexually depraved sounds...
As her nickname might have led you to believe, Keiko's schtick is innocence, the whole Lolita factor, and boy does she play it up, giggling and cooing, purring in the listener's ear, so sexy and sultry, but very 'little girl' like. The music is similar to the other installments, Morricone-ish spaghetti Western twang, smooth Lawrence Welk muzak, horns and strings, funky and jazzy in places, and on this disc maybe more than some of the others, a bit of psychedelia mixed in. As always, it's all about the vocals though, draped sexily over the strange musical backdrops, Keiko delivers her pitch perfect Lolita tease, culminating in the track "Shower", which is just the sounds of Keiko in the shower, the rushing water, splashing and sloshing, and her cooing and giggling all reverby from the shower's tile walls. Sexy for sure, but still very very strange.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, saucy non-nude photos of Keiko on the cover, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!
ULTRA LIMITED!!! Unlike the others in this series, this one was limited to only 500 copies, and is, yep, you guessed it, already out of print. We got a bunch, but if the other volumes were any indication, these will be gone in a flash!
East meets West, two electric guitars meet two organs, a fuzzed out rumbling abstract epic. Phantom Limb just so happens to be 1/2 of Brooklyn noise terrorists PeeEssEye (PSI) who met up with legendary Japanese axeman Tetuzi Akiyama to jam and hang out and the result was this 30 minutes slab of divine droning drift.
Starting out with super spare clatter and rumble, the quartet quickly up the ante, the swirling buzz transforming into huge grinding walls of guitar crumble and amp frying crunch. But this is no simple guitars-against-amps Sunn-drenched dirge. No things get way more interesting. As the guitars start unfurling strange little riffs, repeating and slowly shifting, the organs releasing dense clouds of chordal warmth and ear piercing sine wave skree, everything swaying and shimmering as various internal components twist and transform, gorgeous melancholy melodies appear here and there, haunting angular licks surface, as do strange squeaks and creaks, all the while, a huge soft focus swirl of sound wraps it's fuzzy tendrils around everything. This is definitely noisy, but it's that thick sort of super listenable noise, soothing and dreamlike, more dense and droning than harsh, all the sharp edges rubbed smooth, still explosive and intense and LOUD as hell, but surprisingly blissed out and so subtly serene.
SUPER LIMITED!! ONLY 500 COPIES! We got a bunch but they won't last long...
Japan's Imai Kazuo, an improvising guitarist/electronics experimentalist who was a member of both the legendary psych group Taj Mahal Travellers and the equally legendary free jazz unit New Direction (led by Masayuki Takayangi), teams up here with respected European double-bass improv maestro Barre Phillips, who has played with everyone from Louis Armstrong to Albert Ayler to Peter Brotzmann. Here's another great collaboration for the both of 'em.
Huzzah! This hard to find import from '99 has now gotten somewhat better US distribution, and we're happy to have it. Osaka-based bizarre-beat DJ Pika Pika Pika is actually Eye Yamantaka, mastermind of the Boredoms. This mix cd comes housed in a translucent green jewel case overprinted with an abstract pink and orange design. The case's innards are nice too, with more of Eye's trademark colorful crazy collage art Eye's interest in both collage and sampling has been evident for a long time, from his involvement in the hiphop project Audio Sports, to his cut-up shennanigans on his noise band Hanatarash's 4 album, to the various recent heavily-studio-manipulated Boredoms releases, but here is his first ever recorded DJ set. And, unlike Hanatarash 4, on this one all samples are cleared, and clearly credited...so it's with full authority (no guessing games) that I can tell you you're gonna hear everything from minimalist composer Philip Glass to Bay Area turntablist DJ Disk to British electronica artist Twisted Science to the water drums of the Baka Forest People on Planetary Natural Love Gas Webbin' 199999! What ties it all together and makes it flow is the quirkiness of Eye's selections -- his deftness as a DJ notwithstanding, the segues are rather more playful than beat-driven. But there are plenty of beats, bubbly ones at that, it's just that they're accompanied by such weirdness that your typical club-going dancer probably couldn't deal with it. Eye is as likely to make use of the funky jazz breaks of Japanese artist Woodman as he is to throw in the sounds of the Wedell Seals from the AQ-fave Antarctica cd recorded by naturalist Douglas Quin (yay!). This weird and wonderful disc gives some interesting insight into the contents of Eye's eclectic record collection, for sure, and thus somehow can also increase our understanding of (or possibly heighten our confusion about) his work in the Boredoms, for those inclined to puzzle about such things.
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Acid Mothers Temple alert!! Afrirampo alert too! Fans of either/both of those bastions of underground Japanese trippy hippy psych rock weirdness, listen up! This new Riot Season release is one of thee best Acid Mothers Temple related recordings we've heard in a while (and we've heard a lot). AMT's bearded guitar guru Kawabata Makoto teams up here with an old pal, drummer Pikacyu from the avant all-girl group Afrirampo, for a delightfully demented duo session, the two of 'em egging each other on to ever-more ecstatic extremes of cosmic chaos... Frazzled fuzz and reverbed wall of sound guitar from Kawabata accompanies multiple layers of echoing overdubbed vocalizations (chipmunk one minute, chanting monk the next) from Pikacyu, who also moves things along with energetic abandon on the drums.
The 13 tracks here vary from lovely drone-outs to noisy but poppy songs to short, sharp skronkfests - the 25 second "Oscar No Hope" being this disc's shortest and skronkiest, while the likes of "Back To Your House Over The Rainbow" and "Birth Star" are MUCH longer and more epic. The propulsive, rhythmic latter number being a good example of how this disc at its wild and playful best sounds a bit like Circle meets Melt Banana, or Yoko Ono jamming with Faust, or a nuttier, more psychedelic Deerhoof... yeah, far out! Some of the time Pikacyu-Makoto come across like a (two person) "tribe" a la ESP classic Cromagnon, and there's definitely a big krautrock influence at play (as always with Kawabata, right?).
Even if you're not a dedicated AMT fan, we'd say this is one worth checking out!
First pressing limited to 1000 copies in special gatefold sleeve packaging.
Thee prolific master of Japanese noise, Merzbow, once again teams up with French '70s synth-prog veteran, guitarist Richard Pinhas of AQ faves Heldon. Their first collaboration, the double disc Keio Line from 2008, was quite a success, Merzbow's electronic noise tempered into more of a sci-fi synth enhancement to Pinhas's glorious pulsating psychedelic guitar drone. The two made such beautiful music together, that they continued the collaboration on another double disc, with Wolf Eyes (!) joining in as well. Now, here Merzbow and Pinhas are again, with a cd -and- dvd package, documenting a live duo performance (Merzbow: laptop(s), Pinhas: guitar and "loop system") at the Sonic Circuits Festival in our nation's capital, September 2010. The five tracks on the hour-long cd ebb and flow with shimmering glitch and stutter, it's a fuzzy warm bath of distortion/drone that's loudly blissful, and on occasion even melodic! Meanwhile, the dvd disc features video excerpts from the same performance, so you can see just what these two are up to on stage.
Lovely stuff, for fans of Pinhas in particular, and the not-so-harsh side of Merzbow.... As one reviewer has said, they're like an updated version of Fripp & Eno, and that's not far off the mark.
Though it's 2011 already, turns out there's still some cool 2010 releases we haven't yet gotten a chance to list. We try to keep ahead of the curve, but we can't always get to everything of course. Here's one we don't want to overlook, though. A couple years ago, veteran French guitar/synth maestro Richard Pinhas (of Heldon fame) teamed up with infamous Japanese noise maker Merzbow for a fantastic double disc entitled Keio Line. That combo of '70s cosmic prog-rock electronics and harsh noise/drone was a winner. Here's the sequel, another double disc this time teaming Pinhas not just with the prolific Merzbow but also everyone's favorite underground American noise mavens Wolf Eyes!! Good lord. Batten down the hatches, people! And not only that, but Pinhas cohorts Antoine Paganotti (Magma), Didier Batard (Heldon), and Patrick Gauthier (Heldon, Magma, Weidorje), among others, also contribute on several of the tracks here... of which there are six, sprawling across the two discs.
The first track, disc one, entitled "Bi-Polarity (Gold)", is nearly 16 minutes of rhythmic spaced-out stoner-funk, with skittering drums and plenty of shimmering guitar widdle amidst much glorious hiss, feedback, and distortion. Groovy. Track two, "Paranoia (Iridium)" is almost as long, at 14:21, and is a searing, soaring, synthy soundscape, kind of like an extreme version of Fripp/Eno. Neither of those first two tracks features Merzbow or any of the Wolf Eyes, and that's just fine. Track three, "Depression (Loukoum)", at last brings those guest stars in, giving 'em plenty of space (the track clocks in at about 29 minutes), for a piece that's kind of a combo of the first two tracks. More free jazzish drumming, layered with droning pulsations and washes of shimmering guitar and electronics. It's sorta like Frippertronics meets a spacey Acid Mothers Temple jam, real nice! We are sure a lot of you, who like the AMT and the Necks and the more abstract Circle stuff, will dig this.
Disc two continues the collaboration, with two more epics from the full Pinhas+Merzbow+Wolf Eyes ensemble, "Hysteria (Palladium)" and "Schizophrenia (Silver)", both each almost 30 minutes. The harsh noise/power electronics element is definitely upped on "Hysteria", which starts off like a field recording from a mad scientist's laboratory and by the end gets quite destructively distorted; very Merzbowian indeed. Awesome and satisfying. "Shizophrenia" is rather like "Depression", but rocks out much more, in a psych prog freakout kind of way, before its over. Wow. And finally, the disc finishes up with a solo, seven minute Pinhas piece, "Legend", a calming coda after the intense ensemble action that precedes it.
Gotta hand it to Pinhas, after 40+ years of music making, keeping yourself challenged and on the cutting edge can't be easy, but this is definitely one way (a great way) to do it. Meanwhile, Merzbow and the Wolf Eyes guys must have been floatin', to get to jam with one of the fellows who helped pioneer much of the music they love. Maybe next time Emeralds, Kawabata Makoto, or Oneothrix Point Never can pay their respects. Recommended, even (or especially) to those who are more used to buying releases on, say, Not Not Fun than Cuneiform.
Yes, that's right. Japanese noise maestro Masami Akita, aka Merzbow, teamed up here with guitarist Richard Pinhas of pioneering '70s French synth-prog act Heldon in a Tokyo studio last year. An unexpected collaboration, perhaps, but a successful one - two action-packed discs worth! Here at AQ you could call us Merzbow fans - one of us even dutifully reviewed EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN' DISC in the 50-cd Merzbox that came out a few years ago. He's not only pretty much thee originator of Japanese noise but we still find him to be one of the genre's most interesting practitioners. But since Merzbow is, almost by definition, so prolific, we can't get excited about every single release he puts out (the obi blurb here claiming "He has recorded and released nearly 100 cds" may be the understatement of the century... isn't it more like 1000??). This one, though, we are quite excited about. 'Cause Pinhas is another AQ fave. We love Heldon, and also enjoy much of his solo work since the '70s, right up to 2006's Metatron.
So, what does the Merzbow-Pinhas summit sound like? It's plentiful and varied, but the basic impression is that of Merzbow's fried electronic noise zips and zaps like someone shooting down spaceships amidst Pinhas's glimmering, glorious Frippish guitar drone. Merzbow is credited with EMS Synthi A and "all noises" though Pinhas, with his guitar and "loop system" isn't exactly quiet. As Merzbow's machines emulate the sound of a sparking, arcing live electric wire, electricity shooting sparks in sizzling patterns, Pinhas keeps the pleasurable pulse of his guitar going and going. There was obviously much mutual admiration here, between "Merzdon" and "Heldrow" as one of the track titles puts it, Merzbow thrilled to play with one of his '70s heroes, Pinhas quite aware of how he paved the way for further extremes of experimental, electronic music, but not resting on his laurels at all. They bring out the best in each other, easily making this one of our favorite recent documents from either artist. Pinhas sure can't wimp out here, and Merzbow keeps his contributions psychedelically listenable.
This is available as a double cd on Cuneiform, or a deluxe triple vinyl set on the Dirter Promotions label. Expensive, but quite fancy.
Wherein the Japanese trio play with Junglish beats along with their normal Bacharach-inspired pop.
Swank new disc from these Japanese pop faves.
Compiles the series of 12" remixes of material from P5's Happy End Of The World album, plus a couple of new remixes... Remixers include The Automator, Dimitri From Paris, Oval, 808 State, Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas), John "Plunderphonics" Oswald, Saint Etienne, Momus, Gusgus, and others.
John "Plunderphonics" Oswald and Oval take a stab at it.
Sugary dance-pop you know and, possibly, love -- from the land of the cute, Japan. Much more frantically punchy than their past releases. This is the soundtrack to your dream holiday in Tokyo as you rush about scooping up as many last minute souvenirs. Cruising through scenes of super-bounce glitzy pop to frenetic jazzy numbers to full-on boogie fever to brief, weird, almost sinister (for Pizzicato 5, that is) segments. All kept aloft by the soaring horns, strings and tambourine. Includes three bonus tracks not available on the import version. And as usual wonderfully stylin' photos and packaging. Go go jetsetter!
Reason #651,953,891? (oh heck, I've lost count!) why Japan rules: Polysics! They've been described as the Devo of Japan. And they certainly do give a hearty nod to the genius of Mothersbaugh and co, but they do so in a manner that is purely Japanese...
Until we live in the perfect world where frantic Japanese 'kids' shows such as Kure Kure Takora, Booska and Domokun ran non-stop on the telly, we'll have to make do with the aural equivalent... which is this new Polysics cd. As suggested in the album's title, there's an air of insistent immediacy, but for what we're not quite sure. Curses, you language barriers! We'll just say, Now Is The Time is a manically hyper Japanese collision of no wave and new wave. Lots of tweaked synthesizers and chunky guitars, but with more singing, spazzy shrieks and hollerin' too. With the exception of the second to last song the sugar-shocked "Baby BIAS", this is a heavier, noisier and more darkly dissonant Polysics than the band we remember from their last album, 2001's Hey! Bob! My Friend! This domestic release includes two bonus tracks not on the import! Recommended.
We like! Ears find super fun! Polysics!
Woah. Somebody somewhere just had a fantasy come true, and it's got nothing to do with the bondage photos that often adorn Merbow releases. It's Japanese noise master Masami "Merzbow" Akita jamming with American stoner rock outfit Porn, who feature none other than the mighty Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums. Also Tim Moss on guitar, and heaviness engineering guru Billy Anderson on bass! Add in the Seldon Hunt art/design and this promises to be quite heavy, or noisy, or both. Definitely both, though it sounds much more like a Merzbow record than anything else. Shrieking electronic skree all over the place, with some plodding boombastic drums and heavy guitar riffs struggling through the dense muzzzzzz. Kinda what you might expect!
There are a dozen Roman numeral numbered tracks, each one individualized with Merzbow's noise dynamically varied and vibrating, from crinkum-crankum glitch to high pitched whine to howling, whooshing zapping. Porn's contributions (occasionally) add more structure and momentum. Distorted (natch) vocals surface at one point, the drumming speeds up.... or at other times, despite Porn's presence, the Merzbovian brutal harsh noise simply takes over entirely.
There's certainly precedent for Merbow to mix it up with "rock" music. His Hard Lovin' Man album some years back featured samples of Deep Purple, ferinstance - and of course let's not forget about his couple collaborations with Boris!! Maybe, like those, Porn + Merzbow will be a "gateway drug" for some stoner/doom fans to get into the total noise thing (note however that Merzbow here is far more extreme than his relatively subtle performance on Rock Dream with Boris).
Also, as (in principle) Merzbow fans, but ones often overwhelmed by his prolific output, we're quite partial to his collaborative efforts, giving high marks to recent discs he did with Keiji Haino and Richard Pinhas, juxtapositions like this one which somehow enhance the effect of Merbow's noise aesthetic.
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This cd reissue of a 1969 lp documents the Japanese answer to the British blues rock boom of the late '60s. It's from a band called Powerhouse, featuring future members of underground Japanese psych units Food Brain, Strawberry Path, Flied Egg, and Speed Glue & Shinki. Pertaining to the latter, this album's definite selling point is the fuzzed out guitar wailin' of axe-meister Shinki Chen. Though, in keeping with the blues theme, there's plenty of harmonica blowin' too, including on their rendition of the Beatles' "Back In The U.S.S.R.", which is blusified enough to fit comfortably next to the version of "Hootchie Kootchie Man" that follows it on this record. Hmm, a bluesy "Back In The U.S.S.R."? That's maybe not something we think most folks are in the market for these days...
The album's in fact all covers, all of 'em with heavily accented English language vocals. There's more Beatles ("Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da"), and Hendrix ("Foxy Lady"), and a bunch of blues standards popularized by the likes of Cream and the Yardbirds. While "Ob-la-di" can't help but be fairly upbeat, many of the other tracks here tend towards the groggy and lumbering. Their version of Willie Dixon's "Spoonful" is downright sludgey, and clocks in at over 15 minutes. Also given an extended (16:08) workout is Sonny Boy Williamson's "Good Morning Little School Girl", doubtless inspired by the Yardbirds' version. Another Yardbirds nod is "Mr. You're A Better Man Than I", Powerhouse's lovely version possessed of the melancholic vibe that Japanese psych bands old and new seem to be so good at.
Baron von Rhonedakk and the Crystal Sun is a deep-space collaboration between Japanese home-taper Psychatrone Rhonedakk and Acid Mother Temple's keyboardist, Cotton Casino. Its cosmic contribution to the psychedelic droneiverse is a spaced-out Japanese freak up, man! Through textural, multi-colored and sometimes noisy soundwaves, the duo offer us covers of Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and Nazareth's "Night Woman".
I'd guess that most of us are big fans of Japan's Boredoms. In recent years, they've explored what Andee likes to call "hippie drum circle" percussive jams, with varying (sometimes great, sometimes patience-wearing) results. When it's done well, their psychedelic, rhythmic excess can be transcendental, and will result in a record as wonderful as this Psycho-Baba album. Leader of the band Mhayow plays sitar, and helping him out on this incarnation of Psycho-Baba are two Boredoms members: drummers Atr and the mighty Yoshimi P-We (whose other fabulous side project, OOIOO, is touring the USA in March 2001).
In addition to the Eastern flavor imparted by the sitar, the tabla, and other ethnic instruments, plus the wild vocal effects courtesy Yoshimi and her chaos pad, this East-meets-Electronica group has imbued the music with jubilant trance-inducing electronics. There's a certain undeniably sunny, bouncy exuberance that keeps the record flowing colorfully and prevents it from becoming self-indulgent or too heavy. And we even hear the odd echo or two of Miles Davis' lengthy '70s jazz fusion experiments. Yes, "Psycho-Baba" is a terrible, terrible name, but what can you do? Let the music speak for itself.
By the way, On The Roof Of Kedar Lodge is Psycho-Baba's second disc -- we also have the first one in stock, and it is similar, but was recorded before Yoshimi and Atr joined.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
1st album, before On The Roof.
They sure do make some of the oddest, fluffiest confectionary treats in Japan, and PuffyAmiYumi is no exception. Although Allan has shown an immense aversion to these J-pop gals, we've got their "Illustrated History" album just released domestically on Hoboken's Bar/None Records (originally on Epic Japan). Sounding not unlike a Hello Kitty pinball and pachinko game arcade at the height of sugar-rush hour with super-slick, huge production that puts Britney, Christina and company (not to mention their record exec. handlers) to shame. As flawless, sweet and crisp as a strawberry Pocky stick. This is not deep. This is not complex. This is not difficult. What it is though is unfathomably cute, sparkling, exuberant fun. And unlike their American pop star counterparts, Puffy jumbles together their sackful of music styles with complete reckless abandon. From song to song, they hop about delving into the vaults of 60s girl groups, surf rock, ABBA ("True Asia"), samba ("Sigh Of Love"), The Who circa-Tommy ("Jet Police"), rumba, Beach Boys summer pop, disco ("Electric Beach Fever"), straight up rock'n'roll... you name it! With bountiful horns, hand claps, tambourine, and a troop of backing singers to boot. Love 'em? Hate 'em? Place your votes! Also includes a bonus video of "Boogie Woogie No. 5" that eerily resembles a Gap khakis ad with its crowd of dancing boys on a stark white backdrop.
An avalanche of Japanese sticky sweets. These two gals have been at it for a while now - since '96 to be exact. Yumi and Ami are definite J-pop sensations with their own toys, clothing and tv show, but have relatively only recently drawn attention on this side of the Pacific. And although they've had to change their name over here - adding Ami Yumi - because of another artist who doesn't even go by that name anymore, they've made quite a splash at that. This is their fifth album bursting at the seams with their buoyant, bizarre mish-mash of musical styles - slick'n'dance-y, sunny surf-y, pop-a-billy, Chipmunks-y... you name it. Malcolm McLaren, Pizzicato Five and Fantastic Plastic Machine have all joined the Puffy parade. Will you be next? Perhaps more cute than should ever be allowed? Decide for yourself... avoid like the plague? Or embrace with ultra glee?
Purple Trap is a "supertrio" indeed--the unearthly vocals and guitar of Keiji Haino, backed by ubiquitous bassist Bill Laswell and free-jazz drum legend Rashied Ali! Certainly fans of Haino's Fushitsusha outfit, who themselves released a double cd entitled Purple Trap, will dig this double cd sprawl of howling fury.
We can never get enough Boredoms. But unfortunately, there's never enough Boredoms. We hate waiting years between releases. Thankfully there are plenty of side projects and offshoots to hold us over. One such Boredoms related outfit is Puzzle Punks, featuring Eye from the Boredoms, along with his PP partner Shinro Otake. We carried the limited picture disc of this release years and years ago, but for some reason were never able to get the cd. We recently discovered that there is a NEW Puzzle Punks record (we're not sure if it is indeed new, or just a new collection of old material, but we'll hopefully have it in time for the next list) and at the same time we discovered we could finally get this, the cd version of the Puzzle Punks' 2nd album Budub.
And we forgot just how great this stuff was. Even after a decade the sounds on Budub sound fresh. Weird and fucked too (it is Eye after all) but fresh enough that you could be forgiven for thinking this was some weird Excepter record or No Neck side project. Which just goes to show you how much influence Eye and his gang had and still have on modern music.
The sound of Budub is less caustic and spastic than the first Puzzle Punks records, or the Boredoms records released around the same time. Instead it's a series of experiments in rhythm, maybe hinting at the direction Eye would take the Boredoms on late albums.
Imagine some impossible jam session between the Boredoms and This Heat, or a lobotomized Hawkwind left to jam with the infant versions of the No Neck Blues Band. Or even a room full of musical toys, possessed and allowed to run amok. Dark and deliriously playful. Sometimes creepy and dark, but more often sort of strange and hypnotic. And always some bizarre world of rhythm and rhythmic wonder. Every track a strange sonic trip: analog synth squelches over dreamy chimes and tinkles, processed fuzzy krautrock grooves beneath strange chanted and muttered vocals, murky percussive plod and thud, over which a tiny sped up voice drenched in reverb mews and warbles, haunting vocal and percussion duos, very tribal and mysterious, thick washed out expanses of fuzzy spacerock FX and distant feedback, skittery almost techno shuffles, with bizarre vocalizations, deconstructed melodies played on a toy guitar, accompanied by a slowly wound jack in the box, a grinding wash of super thick distorted throb, a wall of low end whir, a murky world of jungle sounds like a lo-fi Perry And Kingsley and every random rhythmic stop in between.
Boredoms freaks who never picked this up NEED THIS BAD. And all you modern free folks and random rock weirdos into No Neck, Excepter, Sunburned Hand and the like might just dig this a lot!
The Boredoms were always about rhythm, even if it wasn't overt, theirs was a sound based on rhythm. From the splattery chaotic hardcore of early records like Soul Discharge, to their later incarnation as a modern hippy drum rock jam band, every bit of their music was concerned with pulse and throb, it was propulsive and hypnotic, looped and cyclical, sometimes herky jerky and chaotic (but still precisely choreographed), other times serene and abstract, but always with some internal mechanism that tapped into all of the rhythms of life, which is precisely what made the Boredoms' music sound so alive and vibrant and often completely brilliantly baffling.
Last list we reviewed Budub, the 2nd album by Boredoms offshoot Puzzle Punks, which was the duo of Eye of the Boredoms and artist Otake Noboru. A fascinating very Boredoms-esque concoction of cracked rhythms and krautrock grooves, but super spare and stripped down. A garage rock This Heat maybe, traversing an abstract soundscape of loops and broken drum lines, pulsing and plodding, weaving skeletal song frameworks, and just leaving them like that, barebones and full of space. And the result was divine. Hypnotic and dreamlike. Some weird space rock broken down to its base rhythmic element, would up and allowed to stumble and lurch on its own.
Puzzoo was supposedly recorded right after that record, in secret, and recorded almost as you hear, not culled from hours and hours of jamming, rather a wholly realized organic musical happening, captured alive and kicking. Puzzoo finds the Puzzle Punks expanded to a trio, with the addition of an extra guitar, and includes some guest performances from two of the other Boredoms, one of them being Boredoms / OOIOO heartthrob Yoshimi. The result is like a much more beefed up Budub. A little more aggressive, a little more propulsive, but still stripped down and tripped out.
The opening three track salvo is worth the price of admission alone. A solid 40 minutes of damaged abstract spaced out krautrockiness. In fact, just the opener "Puzoo Lunch", a seventeen minute outer space tribal space jam was all we needed to hear. one of those tracks we wish would go on forever. And if the technology existed, we guarantee we'd spend the next 2 weeks listening to the extended 336 hour version, staying home from work, phone off, lights off, drapes drawn, just sort of drifting off in some body rhythm trance. But as it is we'll just have to continually press repeat on the cd player, and just imagine all that other stuff. But what kind of sound would have us in such a frenzy? Some some super bizarre seventies prog rock all tangled up in an alien percussive temple worship ceremony, like a roomful of deranged wind-up toys each given a little tiny set of drums and cymbals, rocking out in miniature to some acid fried psych rock guitar drift. The guitar weaves a deconstructed lo-fi garage rock, with angular no-wave riffs that drift over a motorik clangscape of clockwork thumps and a cacophony of tinkling bells and chimes and cymbals. Above it all hovers some blown out fuzzy blues guitar, weaving lazily in and out of the tangled rhythms. A dense swirl of warbling melodies and strange little sound effects wrap the proceedings in a mysterious spaced out conic cloak, the various guitar lines and melodies constantly mutating and shifting pitch. An impossible alien krautrock groove, an improbable junkyard space rock symphony, like some stripped down garage rock super jam with members of the Boredoms, This Heat, and No Neck Blues Band. Phew. And that's just the first track.
Track two, "Puzoout" follows a similar blueprint, but wraps its rhythms in fuzzy clouds of 8-bit video game sounds, whorls of primitive lo-fi synth and damaged guitar, all over a dizzying splatter of simple shuffle and propulsive skitter. Like a (more) outsider Acid Mothers Temple, but recorded on some sort of children's tape recorder. Track three, "Puzzub", the final part in the unbeatable one-two-three punch, is another druggy rhythmic workout, this time even more stripped down, a blissed out slow burning tribal jam, the main element being mouth harp which gets distorted and twisted, and stretched into a raga like buzz, in the background simple tablas and primitive metallic percussion, all wrapped in a super thick fuzzy veil of staticky haze, and warm warbling shimmer.
The final four tracks, ranging from under three minutes to a little over five minutes, are stunning little fragments of what must be (or could have been) monumentally epic lo-fi space jams, each one a dense little assemblage of deconstructed rhythms, melodic shards, fuzzy ambience, motorik propulsion, machine-like whir and druggy psychedelic atmospheres. All of them could have been stretched into hours instead of minutes without losing any of their mysterious power.
The sound of Puzzle Punks is very reminiscent of groups like No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, but especially the Finnish contingent of the neo-tribal forest drone folk sound, Avarus, Kuupuu, Kemialliset, Anaksimandros, but infused with a distinctly Japanese xxx, as well as a gloriously unhealthy obsession with krautrock, space rock, This Heat and all of the various permutations of the word Puzzle (Puzunk, Puzzdozer, PuZZ-Top, ZZ-Topuzz) So dementedly recommended. As is the previous disc Budub, which we still have a few copies of...
It may be difficult to believe at this point, but we don't actually love everything from Finland. Nor do we love everything from Japan. And what might be equally hard to believe, is that we don't love every band with a crazy name, a monicker equal parts ridiculousness and ultraviolence, Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars, medieval and futuristic. Nor does the presence of flute supersede all other sonic considerations. And being chaotic and damaged and heavy and downright baffling is not, on its own, enough (although it's very very close).
But, and this is the very big BUT we must concern ourselves with here, we do love EVERY SINGLE band we've heard who hail from Japan, via Finland, with an awesomely over the top super metal name, who are heavy and noisy and mathy and fucked up and sort of black metal, and have tons and tons of FLUTE. But then again, there's only one band that fits that description. Japan's Quest For Blood. Released on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, championed by Reverend Bizarre's Albert Witchfinder (who also did the artwork and wrote the band's bio on the Ektro website), who create a dizzying complex bombast of proggy heaviness, of complex arrangements, of blackened metallic majesty, all gnarled riffing, furious drumming, riffy and groovy and buzzy, and flute everywhere, and it's the flute that defines the sound of Quest For Blood, whose sound is both metal and some sort of jazz, equally composed and abstract, black and buzzy, epic and deliriously dense, heavy yet folky and free. Quest For Blood began life as a slightly more traditional black metal band called Magane, but after a chance meeting with Yukihiro Isso, who had in the past played with Tatsuya Yoshida and Keiji Haino, the band changed direction, and blossomed into something else entirely, creating a sound never really heard before, and a sound that we now realize is one we had been fantasizing about for ages, black metal, Japanese folk, wild free flute, blast beats, weird chanted vocals, well, okay, we -would- have fantasized about it, had we ever imagined a band like that could actually exist. Well...
If you're anything like us, you'll be hooked after the first track, which begins with what sounds like Jew's harp and marimba, before launching into some blackened post metal riffing, over which a flute flutters and soars over the top, at once intense and melodic, but also airy and ethereal, it's like super dense metallic math rock meets black metal meets jazzprog, until suddenly the band drops out, leaving just solo flute, for 2 plus minutes, wild free jazz fluttery, folky, freaky, the melodies chaotic and complex one second, gentle and lilting the next, squeaks, skronks, wheezes, whistles, the sound falling somewhere between traditional Shakuhachi folk music and manic free jazz. Until finally, the band return, with some Japanese chanting, and epic Viking style riffery, the flute flitting right along, in its own way as aggressive and intense as the riffing beneath it. The second song follows suit, a roiling churning melee of riffs and blast beats, of serpentine riffing, of buzz and crunch, the flute again weaving dense tangled webs of melody draped over everything, a constant fluttering flitting sonic presence, relentless and breathless and truly dizzying.
The whole record is truly relentless, the flute in full on wild solo jam mode continuously, as the band wind and weave various metallic frameworks underneath. And while the sound is dynamic in its own way, it's also utterly ferocious and unrelenting, occasionally allowed some space, when the song unwinds and the flute is left to drift in long stretches of abstract shimmer, or the band slips into something slightly less manic, but for the most part, this is a gloriously mind blowing progjazzmathmetal onslaught.
As if the record wasn't already weird enough, it gets even weirder, and more varied, near the end, as the songs become more dynamic, the arrangements more stop / start, the various woodwinds offering up underwater gurgles and squiggly manic melodies, than more traditional flute sounds. "Yayema" sounds almost gospel-y, very melodic and dramatic, a little over the top, the melodies major key and majestic, but of course peppered with bursts of furious blasts and wild squall of flute freakout. "Uchina" begins like many of the other tracks, a jazz metal blow out, this time with raspy creature-like vocals, and some pounding piano, until the band drops out, leaving just drums and flute and vocals, reminding us a bit of a more freaked out version of that Dave Lombardo plays Vivaldi record, but with far out chanting, distant raspy vocalizations, all very tribal and weird, with a definite Ruins vibe, before launching back into full on metal mode, now with wailing guitar leads all tangled up with the wild flute.
The final track begins with solo flute, before the band joins in, all rough and raw and lo-fi, pounding out a simple mesmerizing riff, almost Circle style, the drums a murky thud, the flute ethereal and transcendent, eventually, the drums sputtering into some wide open space, before getting all wound up with streaks of scrabbly off kilter guitar in some sort of Ginn-ish guitar drum duel, laced with atonal piano pound, fiery flute and crumbling noisy chaos, finally finishing off in a blaze of metallic murk and abstract black jazz whatthefuck.
So awesome. And confusionally genius. Some seemingly impossible mix of black metal, free jazz, Italian prog, traditional Japanese folk, math rock and noise rock; a mind bending, ear melting mash up of Osanna, the Ruins, Absu, Solar Anus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Comus, Cromagnon, Ghost, Finntroll, Jethro Tull, Circle, Xynfonica, and who the fuck knows what else.
Needless to say, or perhaps worth saying over and over and over. WAY RECOMMENDED. And another contender for metal (or whatever) record of the year.
