The music contained within this Top 50 consists of hard rock, proto-metal,
purely psychedelic free-rock, experimental theatre works, choral and
orchestral music, experimental percussion works, improvised ambient
wipe-outs, progressive rock, and unadulterated guitar mayhem. However, I
have chosen to place the albums in order of personal preference because
certain readers of my Krautrocksampler pointed out that this would
be an easier way into the trip. That said, it's essential to read more than
just these reviews so as to gain a genuine perspective. Almost every artist
mentioned in these reviews receives attention somewhere in the main text,
so this Top 50 is included as an at-a-glance reference section.
Ta,
mein hairies, JULIAN.
In which Yuya Utchida's naked biker boys came of age and then some. For SATORI is one of the all-time great hard-rock rages to hare been unleashed upon the world, a festival of guitar worship led by axe-wieiding maniac Hideki Ishima, who Jeff Becked and Jimmy Paged a number of archetypal Tony lommisms, interlacing each Satanic riff with a more dazzling stellar lick, and invigorating every troll-like sub-basement grunt with a bazillion squirly Hindu sitar figures. The magical results were regally exultant and wantonly barbaric simultaneously, yet so musically complete that they rendered vocalist Joe all but obsolete for the entire duration of the album and did away with the need for song titles entirely. So, following occult heavy rocker J.D. Blackfoot's 1970 LP THE ULTIMATE PROPHECY, which named its tracks 'Song I', 'Song II', etc., Flower also opted for this futuristic approach, naming each track 'Satori I' through to 'Satori V'. During the record's early-twenty-first-century re-evaluation, this apparently experimental and avant-garde 'nameless songs' approach has only lent further authority to SATORI's kudos and mystery, for it has added a gloss of intellectual mystique to this already highly authoritative record. Although this was Flower's second album, it was the first with Atlantic Records visionary Ikuzo Orita's money and production skills behind it. The sound was sensational and the playing superb, high above the Japanese standard of the day and infinitely beyond Flower's feet-of-clay label-mates Speed, Glue & Shinki. Indeed, so out on a limb was SATORI that it still defies true comparison with other records. They just haven't really been recorded yet.
(go back)Blues-based funereal dirges about scoring amphetamines ('Mr Walking Drugstore Man'), paranoid sludge-trudge proto-metal anthems about taking drugs to avoid straight people ('Stoned out of My Mind'), cuckolded dead marches to cheating women with invitations to them to commit suicide ('Big Headed Woman'): welcome to the world of Speed, Glue & Shinki. Even before Atlantic had unleashed this astonishingly raw debut LP on to an unsuspecting public in 1971, guitarist Shinki Chen was already touted as Japan's answer to Jimi Hendrix (he wasn't) and the gorgeous Franco-Japanese heart-throb Masayoshi Kabe was adored by thousands of GS fans as Louis Louis of the Golden Cups. Bandleader, songwriter and singing drummer Joey 'Pepe' Smith was something else again, however, for this six-foot-two Filipino had an out-of-control amphetamine habit and a need to tell everybody about it, Imagine the Move's ultra-slow pre-glam single 'Brontosaurus' as a blueprint for an entire career, and you have this bunch of ne'er-do-wells in your sights. Add ominous atonal sub-sub-Tony Visconti basslines and sub-sub-Bill Ward bibles-thrown-at-the-sofa drum-fills, and you've hit their pleasure centre head-on. Songs came courtesy of the singing drummer, and if his lyrics are killer, then his asides are even more masterfully snotty ('Do yourself in', 'she smokes all of my dope', You can get love if you want it, baby, but you can never get it from me'). Let's conclude this review with bass player Masayoshi 'Glue' Kabe's current thoughts on his old band: 'We were loose... Joey would break the drums and stuff... Even when I listen to it now, I think, "What a great band." Crude, too.'
(go back)Has a one-way trip into the Heart of Darkness ever been made on a more handsome jalopy? For those of you who love their rock'n'roll mayhem to be grounded in traditional chord sequences à la Electric Eels and me mid-'70s Cleveland bands, here Mizutani's channelling both Lou Reed and Leigh Stephens, Side one is just the massively hooky 'Strong out Deeper Than the Night', a fifteen-minute plod that slows down Booker T's 'Green Onions' to funeral pace. The Night Collectors' opens side two like eight minutes of La Düsseldorf in a wind tunnel, as Mizutani's axe envelops us in a sonic Niagara Falls. 'Night of the Assassins' is Little Peggy March's 'I Will Follow Him' surfing to Hell down a giant scree-slope. Side three commences with the slow drone of 'Enter the Mirror', two Velvets chords and the bass player still gets it wrong, eventually coming back to the root note by way of a detour through musical back gardens and alleys. Side three concludes with the breathtaking beauty of 'People Can Choose', an I-musta-heard-this-before ten minutes of splashy cymbals, climbing-the-walls basslines, and on-off torrential guitar torment. Side four's sixteen minutes of 'Ice Fire' is almost Flipper's epic 'Sex Bomb (My Baby Yeah)' - muscular as Joy Division's Wilderness', but scrawled over in thick permanent marker by Mizutani's festival of distortion. It's relentless to the point of becoming meditative, and cylindrical to the point of being useful... I wanna be mat bass player and stand in that wind tunnel, anchoring that level of rage.
(go back)This righteous kosmische union of Japanese commune band and legendary Krautrock producer yielded two sides of extraordinary meditative space rock, setting it apart from almost all other Japrock. Indeed, only Speed, Glue's sidelong Moog suite and M. Satoh's YAMATAI-FU approach this unworldly beast. Recorded at the height of K. Schultze's powers, between his own TIMEWIND and MOONDAWN, and hot on the heels of BLACKDANCE, the LP sees the producer arrange the twin synthesisers of Akira Ito and Kitaro around Shizu Takahashi's drums, pushing guitars, bass and voices to the horizon. Like the so-called Keltic languages, Japanese often cloaks its meanings in ambiguity and none more so than in this work. Acting as a smokescreen for two seamless thirty-minute sides of music, the many titles contain multiple meanings and intentional ambiguities to further mystify listeners. The opening track 'Saisei' (Rebirth) takes the English title 'Metempsychosis', while 'Sei no Kakucho' (Expansion of Life) becomes simply 'Entering', and 'Jikukan no Kozui' (Flood of Time & Space) becomes Times'. Side one closes with the unambiguous 'Kokoro' (Heart). On side two, 'Tagenuchu eno Tabi' (The Trip to the Parallel World) becomes PARALLEL WORLD'S title track, and 'Amanescan no Yoake' (The Dawn of Aman-ezcan) is rendered in English simply as 'Amanezcan'. Although the beautifully poetic 'Yomigaeru Kishiten' (The Point of Origin Reborn) is reduced simply to 'Origin', 'Zen' is a direct translation. Somehow, 'Muso no Shinri' (Reverie) migrates into 'Reality', while the two final tracks 'Kikosen' (New Lights) and 'Seireki 2000 Nen' (In the Year 2000) contain no ambiguities. By journey's end, so-called reality appears somewhat raw to the cushioned and cocooned listener.
(go back)Anyone searching out a single J.A. Caesar record for their library should aim for this album, for its shrewd editing and powerful tracklisting put it head-and-shoulders above the rest. Caesar was forced by Victor Records to include only the most obvious excerpts, culled from the five-hour original play, in order to reduce the work to a single vinyl LP. In so doing, the composer unintentionally created a 'greatest hits' compilation for us, as classic track follows classic track. In 2002, the re-issue label P-Vine created an exact replica of the 1973 edition on Victor (even the orange label copied the original) and KOKKYOU JUNREIKA was officially reissued in an edition of 500 copies with four pages of liner notes and Obi-strip. It's to be hoped that further editions will be forthcoming, for the album certainly works best on vinyl. While side one contains six excellent tracks in a kind of proto-metal/garage-rock style, the three hugely mysterious and long songs of side two are up there with any of the greatest kosmische-styled Krautrock - early Ash Ra Tempel, Cosmic Jokers, Agitation Free and ATEM-period Tangerine Dream, most especially. Throughout the proceedings, J.A. Caesar's droning electric organ hangs like a curtain of mist across a Welsh v-shaped valley, while the eerie female vocals of singers Yoko Ran, Keiko Shinko and Seigo Showa add a Norn-like mountain mystery even to the most brutal of side one's vicious hard-rock onslaughts. Behind the intentionally off-putting titles (eg: 'Jinriki-hikoki no Tame no Entetsu Soan' (Public Speech for the sake of Pedal-powered aircraft), anyone?) is an all-time classic rock'n'roll album.
(go back)Commencing with singer Akira Fuse's goggle eyed one-day-old-baby innocence, Love Live Life +1's album opener 'The Question Mark' escorts us through an eighteen-minute free-rock R&B adventure like nothing before or since. Clanking harsher than even the title track of Funkadelic's FREE YOUR MIND & YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW, and twice as long; cosmic as the Cosmic Jokers' GALACTIC SUPERMARKET, and gnarly as John McLaughlin's out-there-a-minute axe excursions on Miles's 'Right Off' or his own DEVOTION solo LP, do these guys fight for their right to party! The mellower second side includes the insanely brilliant eight-minute epic 'Shadows of My Mind', in which Akira Fuse sings like some drunken Italian baritone, while atonal swooping strings and crazy brass support/undermine him; then it's off into a juggernaut bass-heavy clatterthon with duel-axe outrage of the highest level. And how about that title track whose catchy bastard licks unashamedly rip Sly's 'I Wanna Take You Higher', but still have you singing along with fuse? The record closes brilliantly with the demented 'Facts about It All', which opens like Fuse laying a grunting 6/8 James Brown/Eric Burdon ballad on us. But no, this miniature R&B opera says in 2 minutes and 56 seconds what prog bands took a whole side to say. All hail visionary genius Ikuzo Orita for uniting his fave guitarist Kimio Mizutani with the errant free-jazz Gibson 335 of Takao Naoi, whose brittle spittle pops permanent wheelles around these slippery rhythm tracks. Also hail Orita for recognising the genius of these songs of sax player Kei Ichihara, for trusting Akira Fuse's professionalism and open-mindedness, and for seeing this 33-minute-iong classic to its unlikely conclusion.
(go back)This preposterous piece of psychedelic avant-jazz sounds like the work of aliens, each with only one foot in our universe. Propelled by cacophonous brassy blasts, volleys of machine-gunning, ecstatically 'Light Fantastic' rhythms and moments of Teo Macero-style 'Mixing Concrete' (during which the whole track becomes consumed by waves of new sound); the result is the most singular mash-up of inappropriate sounds any listener is ever likely to hear. Over two side-long tracks, shaman Masahiko Satoh sends us through a sonic mind-field, baffling our senses and our sense of gravity. Located at the centre of AMALGAMATION'S giddy sessions was the frantic Detroit drumming of hard-bop legend Louis Hayes, whose role it was to play the bubbling ever unfolding fundament on which Masahiko Satoh's whole trip proceeded, as though the rhythm section were a magic carpet constantly being pulled out from under the feet of the other performers. Over this rhythmic shaking, Satoh scattered Hammond organ around and ring-modulated* his Fender Rhodes piano solos (* Roland built three especially for the record), added lead guitar from 'super session' legend Kimio Mizutani, trumpets and sax from Mototeru Takagi, scat singing from Kayoko Itoh, and strings from the Wehnne Strings Consort As if to further disorientate us, the composer divided the single fifteen-minute track of side one into ten absurd titles (eg 'The Atomic Bomb Was Not Follen' [sic], 'All Quite on the Western Front' [sic]), and the single twenty-one minutes of side two similarly ('Hear Me Talking to Ya', 'Ancient Tales of Days to Come'), though both tracks are intended as single pieces, being encoded thus on CD re-issues. Essential stuff.
(go back)Commencing with the greatest scream of any rock'n'roll record ever, this transcendental debut by Geino Yamashirogumi (Yamashiro's Performing Arts Group) inhabits its own space like no other. Recorded in Tokyo, at Victor Records' enormous Studio Number One, the LP is comprised of two side-long pieces of ritual chanting and theatre music in the J.A. Caesar tradition. Side one's title track celebrates the sacred northern mountain Osorezan, said to be the haunt of ancient ancestors and historically infamous as the place where the old were left to die. 'Osorezan' was performed by seventy singers accompanied by a highly authoritative and psychedelic band (including two ex-Spiders), something like the Rowers' side-long epic 'I'm Dead'. There was in Japan no previous precedent for such transcendental music, and 'Osorezan"s unfathomable beauty should be compared to a highly extended Doors-influenced theatre piece, incorporating elements of Dr John during his Night Tripper phase, Carl Orff's ecstatic chorale Carmina Burana and Japan's own chanting oddities Karuna Khyal and Brast Burn. Side two's 'Do No Kenbai' (Copper Sword Dance) continues the intrigue but at much-reduced wattage, being performed entirely a cappella by only thirty performers. This piece occupies much the same space as the Residents' bizarre LP ESKIMO. However, being unaccompanied by electric instruments, it lacks that same 'Amphetamine up the psychic jacksie' that renders the title track so great. Unfortunately, as the 'Osorezan' title track is one of rock'n'roll's highest ever achievements, its greatness eclipsed all of the ensemble's future releases. The ensemble was assembled, named and led by arranger Shoji Yamashiro, who co-wrote both pieces with composer Chumei light Universe' Watanabe.
(go back)Clad in a super-appropriate sub-Bridget Riley Op-art sleeve and comprised of two side-long compositions, 'Mano Dharma 74' and 'Wave Code #e-1', this is Kosugi's most immediate and essential work ever. An all-time kosmische drone classic, its stratospheric violin and wah-mouth explorations are guaranteed to make moonwalkers out of fans of Tony Conrad's OUTSIDE THE DREAM SYNDICATE, Klaus Schultze's IRRLICHT, CYBORG or BLACK-DANCE's 'Some Velvet Phasing', my own 73-minute-long 'Breath of Odin' or even Hi T. Moon-weed's 'A Sprinkling of Clouds' (yeah, I know). The twenty-six minutes of side one sound like primary-school Clangers making faces at commuter Clangers from out of the school-bus window in the traffic jam from Hell. Side two's triple performance by a solo vocalist; returns to the same territory as Joji Yuasa's very early '60s work, most especially his 1961 Noh Theatre epic 'Aoi No Ue'. However, instead of employing Noh actors like Yuasa chose to do, Kosugi here just turns the echo machine back on itself and becomes the Four Tops of the Underworld. As Iskra Records gave this a limited vinyl release a few years back, there's always hope that it's about to make a return to the shelves. If so, search out the vinyl if only to catch such back-sleeve proclamations as The Deaf Listen To Sounds Touching Watching... The Blind Watch Sight Listening Smelling' and 'Sounds Speeding On Lights, Lights Speeding On Sounds, Music Between Riddles & Solutions'. Yowzah! Finally, be sure to avoid Kosugi's god-awful improvisational VIOLIN SOLO 1980 at any cost, because its epileptic bucking bronco-isms suck beyond the call of duty.
(go back)This mighty soundtrack for Shuji Terayama's nihilistic movie of the same name contains all of the elements necessary to reach J.A. Caesar's intended pleasure centres. Here, turmoil, mind-numbing repetition, abject misery and grisly patriarchs abound, and all orchestrated by Caesar's damaged proto-metal and choral-led psychedelic sound. Mind-manifesting in the truest sense, this soundtrack played in the dark is as certified a Gateway to the Underworld as any acknowledged classic by Faust, Magma, the Cosmic Jokers, Ash Ra Tempel or early Amon Düül. Playwright Terayama populates bis play with crucified crazy women, enormous-nosed titans living in the foothills of legendary mountains, sparrow torturers and a Zorro-styled revenge-seeking Samurai named Kurama Tengu. However, his genius is equalled by Caesar's canny ability to access the Weird by all and any means; traditional song, easy listening, stupefying musical clumsiness, hoary rock cliche, everything is an ingredient here to be subsumed into the composer's end dish. And it's a concoction best served up hot, and with time on your hands. Nineteen songs with multiple meanings and such opaque titles such as 'Tsuru no Tema' (The Crane's Theme), 'Shishi no ko' (The Lion's Child) and 'Kanoke Buro' (Coughing Bath) (see Book Two, Chapter Ten for more) are split over seven equally strangely monikered phases, Twice, following particularly ecstatic musical broadsides, calm descends long enough for Kan Mikami's solo guitar and ragingly insulting mouth to throw us all into the nearest pond. Finally, the whole chaotic mess concludes with Wasan', a Buddhist hymn sung in Japanese to a modern trendy melody so that people can understand the teaching more easily. It figures.
(go back)Arriving in a flurry of analogue heartbeats and echo chambers, formless monophonic Moog synthesisers and microphone feedback, Far Out's 1973 album is an alien and exquisitely beautiful music embodying all the greatest aspects of rock'n'roll at once. Herein, there are rhythms with which to brain yourself, howling banshee vocals, melancholy tunes, dive-bombing seagull guitars, overly hopeful Utopian lyrics, and harmonies to live for. This, their sole LP before transforming into monstrous ensemble Far East Family Band, was a place where tradition and novelty sat together side by side; a place where cheesy melody and hoary chord sequences rubbed shoulders with shockingly unbalanced sonic gimmicks. Side one's Too Many People' is an acoustic ritual performed in a gargantuan Cretan antron, stopping, re-starting, lurching and s-s-shaking. The whole effect creates a sense of total mystery and awe, as though we've eavesdropped on some long-planned pilgrimage and found ourselves along for the ride. Although side two begins in another rhythm-less flurry - this time full of gongs and reverbed guitars, srtars and tom-toms - the music contains vibrant Krautrocfc power drives and intense guitar displays. This is the mighty twenty minutes of 'Nihonjin', which Far Out would later record for their first German Far East Family Band LP. There it was to evolve into a master-work of layered Mellotrons, twin monosynths and mucho choirs. But here in 1973, that reverbed soup of an introduction soon evaporates to reveal a dry frame of melancholy minor chords and more lyrics of tragedy and loss. It's truly one of those rare pieces that confounds listeners with its musical obviousness yet sparklingly emotional freshness.
(go back)Massive slabs of distortion inhabit every seam of this monstrously linear album. The bass lines are uber-monolithic, in places dropping away in a dubby style that leaves the top end teetering like a tiny boat watting to be swallowed by a whirlpool. The lead guitar seems even more extravagantly committed to tinnitus oblivion than ever, Mizutani having intentionally ditched the between rhythms played by hi-hats and chugging guitars in a desire to bring a post-apocaiyptical featurelessness to his muse. Despite the horrendous amp buzz, there's just enough instrument separation to suggest these were studio takes and that the buzz was explicitly sought after. Mizutani is known to have played shorter live versions of these tracks during the early '80s, also at studio sessions during the mid-to-late '80s. The juggernaut opening title track is a heavily re-worked '80s version of their epic 'Flames of Ice', which appeared on several albums before this one. That this version is borne along by an entirely different bass line, and features different lyrics delivered with an entirely different melody and method of delivery, should come as no surprise to us. Track two is a suppressed monster called 'An Aweful Eternitie' aka 'Zankoko Na Ai' (Cruel Love) aka 'Koi Monogatari' (Tale of Love), a remote and mysterious thing without highs or lows, its rambling meditation in no hurry to reach its destination. This version first appeared on a 10CD box set STUDIO & SOUNDBOARD 1979-1986, and is said to have been recorded in April 1986. Typically. 'The Last One' concludes the record, here a taut-wired high-energy seventeen-minute version.
(go back)Sounding as thrilling and berserk as J.A. Caesar in full flight, this amazing interpretation of Shuji Terayama's 'city play' is by far and away this ensemble's finest hour. The psychedelic guitar riffs are said to be the work of Flower Travellin' Band's Hideki Ishima, the stock chatter, the screaming, and the chorale all supporting rumours that Caesar himself was involved. Only the movie version betters this ecstatic performance. Formed in 1968 by former Tenjo Sajiki member Yutaka Higashi, the company was initially known as Kiddo Kyodai Shokai ('Kid Brother Company'), as Higashi had chosen the eight other members from students at his old high school. In 1969, they opened a stage shop in Shibuya called 'Hair', and performed their next work Tokyo Kid' in July 1969. In early spring 1970, Hair's producer was so impressed by their new Golden Bat production that he considered paying for them to perform in New York. When this fell through, they decided to pay their own way and became Tokyo Kid Brothers to clarify their background to the American market. Apart from this album, few Tokyo Kid Brothers works are essential, many being actual mainstream musicals. A 6CD box released by P-Vine Records a few years ago collected together materia! from Victor, Polydor. Warner Pioneer and Toshiba EMI Records. Originally released between 1971 and 77, this highly mixed bag was of variable quality; some of it was so downright bland that prospective buyers of this lot should ensure they hear albums before buying anything from the huge back catalogue.
(go back)Ey-up, it's the Cosmic Jokers... Oops, silly me, Klaus Schultze has been at the mix again and turned Far East Family Band's Moody Blues fixation into a kosmische classic. Always utterly devoid of any sense of proportion and sonic balance, Klaus transformed the band's merely excellent second album into an entirely new beast, replete with fangs, fiery tongue and sixty-metre tail. Not content with goading bandleader Fumio Miyashita into entirely re-recording Far Out's monstrous debut-LP title track from 1973, Klaus then commandeered the master tapes of their latest epic and barfed VCS3 and ARP 2600 synthesisers all over the already synthesiser-heavy sound. Ja, mein hairy! Next, he craftily sodded off the vocal-heavy songs and brought everything up louder than everything else. Mellotrons deliver warm choirs of angels and icerink orchestras throughout, while the immaculately named Joe USA provides just enough panpipes to stop Mike Pinder suing them, but not enough (mercifully) to get them played as background music in the local patchouli shop. Finally, Klaus smoked enough green to out-dub Dennis Bovelle and kicked Dieter Derks' dick into the dirt with this all-time phase-o-thon. Best of all, at the present time (December 2006), everybody thinks Far East Family Band does what it says on the tin: ie, too Eastern, too familiar, too prog to be worth taking a risk on. So, like NEU! '75 a decade ago, it's still possible to pick these vinnyl gems up for a tenner. Race to eBay and make sure you don't fall for the late-night drunken 'Buy It Now' at over-inflated price. So, er... Look Out!
(go back)Sagging under the weight of Joey Smith's howling, lupine genius and loopy extended metaphors, it's hard to imagine this self-titled double-LP barrage was created by a disintegrating band just twelve months into their career, but it's true. Determined to kiss off this power trio in style, Brother Joey demanded his own EXILE... and brought in a Moog synthesiser and old friend Mike Hanopol to shore up the gaps left by departing itinerant bassist Masayoshi 'Glue' Kabe. Unlike self-doubting heavies such as Mountain, Bang, Dust, Warpig, Cactus, Blood-rock, Boomerang, Captain Beyond or even our beloved Sir Lord Baltimore, Joey was far too smart to feel the need to prove he had his own vocabulary. His art was the evidence; this double-LP high art. The excellent results included the finest cartoon drug lyric ever ('Sniffin' & Snortin'), the best non-MC5 Utopian battle-cry ever ('Run & Hide'), and the most presumptuous-yet-wholly-successful bit of metaphor-jumping ever (side four's Moog-only instrumental suite 'Sun, Planets, Life, Moon', which this power trio shamelessly performed in the style of T. Dream's ZEIT). Yowzah! Even better, guest bassist Mike Hanopol managed to cop as many song credits (nine!] as leader Joey. Good job, too, as Shinki Chen's two contributions were pitiful sub-Peter Criss twaddle. The album package, created by Taj Mahal Travellers' Michihiro Kimura, arrived in two highly glossy single yellow jackets screen-printed with tigers, enfolded in heavy printed brown paper outers, and replete with three lyric sheets. What a way to go, ay? Thereafter, Joey and friend Hanopol flew south to Manila, where they became Filipino superstars and remain so to this day.
(go back)Released in answer to Ikuzo Orita's superb 'Polydor Super Session' series of LPs, this riposte/rip-off, written by Buddhist poet/songwriter Naoki Tachikawa and organised by Teichiku Records' A&R director Hideki Sakamoto, challenged every one of Orita's projects and beat most of them cold simply by working through Orita's own blueprint line by line. People even deployed the arsenal of Orita's own guitar star, ex-Out Cast hired gun Kimio Mizutani, whose subtle licks inform the entire work. Mizutani shines brightest on side one's twelve-minute drone chant 'Shomyo Part One', but the bluesy bell tone of 'Shomyo Part Two' is pure and exquisite cosmic monotony, as is that employed on 'Flower Strewing', which elevates the track right out of authentic religious bore into a Funkadelic Deadmarch. On the five-minute wa-funk of 'Gatha', the apparently egoless Mizutani conjures up a typical Hideki Ishema-style axe scrawl, giving the track a sound just like Kuni Kawachi's KIRIKYOGEN. By the middle of side two, the tension has broken and the record starts to sound like Tim Leary's 7UP collaboration with Ash Ra Tempel, as orgasmic Gille Lettmann/Rosi Muller-style female shrieks overwhelm 'Prayer'. Director Sakamoto kept it all spacey and minimal, then added plenty more LUMPY GRAVY-penod Frank Zappa and mucho David Axelrod (whence came many of the original concepts) to the stew. As if to prove People's pragmatism, 'Epilogue' concludes with two minutes of jamming over Axelrod's immaculate 'Holy Thursday' from SONGS OF INNOCENCE. People's success is in their tenacity in holding on both to the drone and, therefore, to the metaphor, which permeates the entire recording and lays serious meditative usefulness on to the listener.
(go back)Opening with the super-stoner anthem 'Atomic Bombs Away', this brilliant second Blues Creation LP is a proto-metal classic. Its eight songs were both complex and supremely individual, despite showing clear influences from fellow countrymen and free-thinkers Flower Travellin' Band. Indeed, guitarist Kazuo Takeda's own Mississippi Mountain Blues' mirrors the heaviness located within the grooves of Flower Travellin' Band's juggernaut 'Louisiana Blues', as sent through a Yardbirds filter. This LP featured a brand-new version of Blues Creation after superstar guitarist Kazuo Takeda, on hearing the new, strung-out music of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Eric Clapton's solo LP CLAPTON, decided he should take the opportunity to start again from scratch. New conscripts bassist Masashi Saeki and drummer Akiyoshi Higuchi add massive balls, giving Takeda the confidence to eschew his previous covers style in favour of his own excellent compositions, which come on like the Yardbirds meets Black Sabbath's debut. But if this scorching collection of proto-metal kacks logs on the band's debut, it's mostly because of the arrival of singer Hiromi Osawa, whose mighty larynx eclipsed that of founder Fumio Nunoya. At the end of 1971, another essential gem was released in the form of BLUES CREATION LIVE. However, Takeda was by now a famous Japanese guitar hero and split the band before splitting for London in 1972. In 1973, when he returned to Japan to support Lesley West's Mountain, it was as the lead singer/guitarist of a new power trio called simply Creation. The debut Creation album cover featured a crowd of naked pre-teen boys pissing on the floor.
(go back)Recorded in Canada by a jazz keyboard player who didn't understand them, Flower's SATORI follow-up was confused, disorientated, depressed, self-deprecating and a wonderful album. The raging experimental near-instrumental jet fighters of SATORI here gave way to Middle European proto-metal of the Amon Düül 2 variety, replete with acoustic Tony Iommisms and mucho Satanic raga. The depressing album opener 'Unaware' comes on like Arthur Lee's electro-acoustic OUT THERE version of 'Signed DC rewritten by Amon Düül 2's Chris Karrer into some over-reaching ballad. Joe repeats verse one an octave higher each time until it sheers off into coyote cackle, the bizarrely off-kilter un-rock refrain then kicking in: 'Determined am I now to live all in flame till nature snuffs it out to rest', 'Aw, Give Me Air' still retains the proto-metal Devilish chord changes of SATORI, but it's mare Asian than demonic, as is the tense demonic riffing and a banshee vocal of 'Kamikaze'. All descends into Yardbirds-ian gothiic choir, Joe asking have we lived in Sodom and Gomorrah? Then, building inexorably, the song ejects us into more YETI-period Amon Düül 2 via the proto-metal guitar freak-out. 'Hiroshima' is the finest song here, utilising the 'Satori Part 3' music combined with chilling, confrontational lyrics all mightily un-nerving to any Westerner. The scything guitar of 'Spasms' cuts across the staccato rhythm, its melody's mounting insanities conjuring demons out of nowhere. The lyrically facile 'Heaven and Hell' is musically pure Hendrix, while album closer 'That's All' - possessed of gymnastically atonal vocals - brings the record to a close via one of the longest '70s fades I can remember.
(go back)Imagine the Jehovah's Witnesses were right and the world had ended in 1975. Imagine a tribe of Louisiana backwoodsmen who'd been reared on a diet of freak-out albums such as Arnon Düül's, Hapshash & the Coloured Coat's, Friendsound's JOYRIDE, Kalakackra's CRAWLING TO LHASA, voodoo rituals and re-runs of Bewitched. Yup, Karuna Khyal is that kind of paganism. Their line-up is thought to have been similar to that of Brast Burn, but as the Japanese futen scene was so genuinely itinerant, people came and went with the same cavalier attitude as Amon Düül's Berliner Eins. Some have speculated that this outfit was comprised of members of Tokyo's Jigen re-located to Kyoto; others believe its provenance had nothing at all to do with the main futen scene, hatching its plans far to the north of Sapporo. Whatever the truth, Karuna Khyal clearly bears the same relationship to Brast Burn as East Biomc Symphonia shared with Taj Mahal Travellers, ie: Karuna Khyal is a far smaller ensemble with better equipment (the recording techniques betray an engineer more at ease with his technology, employing mike distortion intelligently on the drums without letting it destroy the rest of the track). 'First time musette' of the Captain Beefheart/Pere Ubu variety adds variety to their Faustian muse, plus a fondness for deploying their own field recordings. Imagine Acid Mothers Temple come not from the Brum of Japan (Nagoya), but instead hailed from a little hamlet outside Melksham or one of those equally scary Wiltshire towns'. That is Karuna Khyal. Like Brast Bum's DEBON, this was re-issued in 1998 on the Paradigm label.
(go back)Come Doomsday, when all of us line up to be judged for what we did or didn't do, there'll surely be a big queue of artists such as Scott Walker and Half Man/Half Biscuit's N. Blackwell awkwardly harrumphing under an 'Intuitive Non-Career Movers' neon sign. Right at the head, of course, will be Rallizes's own Takeshi Mizutani, who'll still be blaming his bass player for the hijack and the recording engineer for making his studio debut such a nightmare. Which is why this particular Rallizes release is so refreshing, because some deluded soul has clearly attempted - on CD and double vinyl, no less - to create a 'retrospective/best of' to sit in HMV's racks alongside all the Sony/EMI corporate compilations, YODO-GO-A-GO-GO even opens with a track from Mizutani's aborted first studio) mission, 'Otherwise My Conviction' sounding pretty damn fine in a post-PEBBLES kind of way. Two minutes of unprovenanced 'I'll Be Your Mirror'-style querulous balladry follows with 'Vallé de L'Eau', while the thirteen minutes of 'Enter the Mirror' is a tinnitus-inducing Dronefest Maximus. It's the full Wakabayashi version of 'Smokin' Cigarette Blues' that opens side two, while the nineteen-minutes-long BLIND BABY... mid-'80s version of 'Flames of Ice' extends right across side three. The final side lashes the ten-minute wipe-out of 'Field of Artificial Flowers' to a startlingly brief brain-crushing 'Deeper Than Night' that sounds remarkably like the HEAVIER THAN A DEATH... version, but concludes naturally rather than fading. Unfortunately, a second (and vastly interior) version of 'Otherwise Conviction' brings this double-LP to a stumbling halt. But, then, 7-out-of-8 classics ain't half bad, especially on the coloured vinyl versh!
(go back)The greatest cosmic jazz album ever made? The pursuit of Krautrock's highest accolades armed only with an acoustic jazz orchestra and a single ring-modulator? The Dawning of Humanity's earliest ages as filtered through the ultimate urban musical filter? YAMATAI-FU is all of these things and more, a spell-binding and iconoclastic work the like of which has never before been encountered. Hot on the heels of the hardtop drum-fuelled kosmische classic AMALGAMATION, and once again highly inspired by his collaborations with experimental pianist Wolfgang Dauner, Masahiko Satoh. next delivered this huge three-part score for Toshiyuki Miyama & New Herd Orchestra, in which drummer Masaru Hiromi became the lynchpin for its entire monumental groove. Indeed, if's difficult to image how much weight the drummer would have lost over the course of this mighty session. Around Togashi's flailing Philly Joe Jones-meets-Klaus Schultze drum insanity, the composer built a series of highly arranged and ever unfolding brass pieces (sometimes cacophonous/sometimes sweet) that united more cosmic jazz in the style of his own AMALGAMATION together with elements of full-flight Archie Shepp on the title track of his VASMINA, A BLACK WOMAN. Over this bizarre mix, Satoh added his own heavily ring-modulated electric piano, sending out Ur-sparks and shards of sonic light into the heavens with this primitive electronic device, kicking Christian Vander's underachieving butt and creating a proto-Cosmic Jokers work in the process. Side one contained the single epic 'Ichi' (First), while side two was split into 'Ni' (Second) and 'San' (Third). The whole album is a righteous ducking for those who believe the Japanese never get anywhere first.
(go back)Five years in preparation and at-home recording, this extraordinary debut album, released by a precocious and still-adolescent nineteen-year-old, was a highly strange mixture of pop art and Krautrock (its cover, inspired by the Faust and Neu! debuts, simply enlarged the Polydor label and price to cover the entire front and back sleeves). Opening with Mako's fake radio announcement of impending apocalypse, slightly undermined by a background of cats miaowing and D. Duck impersonations, the shamanic vocal chanting of 'Cha Cha' follows, thence to the biwa'n'guru declarations of Tsugaru', and the field records of 'In a Stalactite Cavern. Astoronaus' (Mako beating drums in an ancient cave) 267 and 'Town' (solo street-corner singing). 'Flying' evokes a sub-Flower Travellin' Band 'Stairway to Heaven' ballad, replete with Mellotron 400 flutes, before ascending skywards on a psychedelic trajectory similar to early Tractor. Side one concludes with the psychedelic post-commune shriek of 'Restraint, Freedom', Mako here accompanied by cohort Keiji Heino (credited as 'Kei-chan'). Side two commences with the perfect kindergarten piano ballad 'Open the Morning Window, the Sunshine Comes in, the Hope of Today Is Small Bird Singing'. Imagine the third Velvets album as an X-Mass number one. Mako sings this in a Yoko Ono-as-infant voice, until gently accompanied by an earnest tiny boy, singing tunelessly. Mellotron 400 eventually buries everything in luxurious strings, until abruptly cut down by the Cossack yelping of 'Ruding Piano', after which the LP devolves into sound FX, chanting and mucho Mellotron. The twelve-minute closer 'Look up at the Sky' is a devotional hymn halfway between J. Cale, Colin Blunstone and E. Frankenstein. Essential.
(go back)This album is a discorporated, cerebral dance whose rhythm sounds like six weather Gods emulating the cover of Deep Purple's FIREBALL by zooming around Silverstone circuit just inches above the track, each urging himself on by making engine noises: 'Eee-oww-urghh-ow!!!!!!' Opening with Ryo Koike's horizontally played bowed double bass, it's my fave of Taj Mahal Travellers' three releases, better even than the obstinate medication of the first official LP JULY 15, 1972, because there's twice as much of it. Meditatively, it's extremely useful too: at the entrance portals of this live record, Ryo Koike uses his bass to invoke phlegm phantoms and cranny demons from the butt walls of Cronosian caverns; conjuring a sound as Biblical as Conrad Schnitzler's bizarre bowed cello on T. Dream's ELECTRONIC MEDITATION. Gradually, hesitatingly, almost imperceptibly, a violin theme installs itseff, establishing over the next quarter of an hour clop-clopping hooves of hallow rhythm that conjure up the image of frustrated pastoralists driving their reluctant donkeys around the highest and most precipitous cliff edges, as their valuable cargoes sway and shudder and threaten to come untied at any moment. Recorded a full year before their first official LP, I think this In Concert album is a far better and more confident shamanic statement, for this Stockholm recording melded together all six group members in such a way that no single musician rises from the primal soup long enough to establish his singular muse. The vocal effects are truly stunning, evoking everything from comb-and-paper voices playing Zeus in the sixty-metre deep Dhikhtean Antron to braying cartoon coyotes laughing to their deaths.
(go back)After the impish precociousness of his debut Mako got caught up in the post-TUBULAR BELLS fallout that afflicted much music of 1974-75, so his second release, SUPER RECORD, was unlistenable New Age twaddle of the World Music variety, with sleevenotes comparing it to 'folk music of India, Turkey and Russia ... expressing fully the odour of the soil'. Where the cattle pissed, mate. Sheesh! A good slapping from occasional cohort Keiji Heino got him back on track, as evidenced from the massively crunchy Kraut-funk of JUMP. Bye-bye panpipes: back comes the RIOT-period Sly Stone mind-numbing bass, plus madly catchy glampop hooks, phased twin-lead guitars and ridiculous catchy hooklines. A glam racket clothed in a jacket that, simultaneously, harked back to Jobriath and anticipated the '80s. Imagine Franco Battiato's FETUS meets John Cale's THE ACADEMY IN PERIL meets Moebius & Plank's RASTAKRAUTPASTA three years early, all mashed up with Eno's Third Uncle' and bits of Slapp Happy's Anthony Moore during his FLYING DOESN'T HELP underground pop phase, Sometimes cantankerous, mostly essential, very Krautrock in attitude and occasionally lapsing into L. Voag's THE WAY OUT territory. 'Jump to You' is Faust on a NYC funk trip, The Story of Our Master' is instant composition at its catchiest, 'Give Me Present' is ecstatic gypsy Battiato, 'Rest Light Down' is Charlie Brown theme music for Peter Hammill, 'So' is FAUST IV as is 'Blue Wind', 'Elephant's Jungle' is avant-crap, the brilliant eight-minute title track is early VISITATION-period Chrome meets DELUXE-period Harmonia being a hard-rock band, and '21st Ocean' is Curved Air's 'Rob One'. Specific enough for ya?
(go back)Flower Travellin' Band obsessives or any fans with a predilection for Joe Yamanaka's mutant cakehole and Hideki Ishima's mighty axe should direct their hard-earned at this classic forthwith, for its contents are all shot through with precisely the yawp you're requiring. Despite being former organist and leader of Group Sounds underachieves Happenings Four, Kuni Kawachi nailed this sucker to the floor with an entire album of classic songs, featuring the aforementioned Flower Gods in pole positions throughout. Moreover, an early version of Flower's non-LP single 'Map' lurks within, hiding behind the title 'Music Composed Mainly by Humans'. While dry, spaced-out and highly original hard-rocking ballads occupy side one, side two is possessed of a hitherto unseen acoustic side of Hideki Ishima's playing in the highly catchy 'Graveyard of Love', 'Classroom for Women' and the late Velvets styled 'Scientific Investigation'. And while Joe's tonsils never get the same rigorous overhauling that his Flower cohorts demand, even his most gentle contributions herein showcase 'that voice to perfection. That KIRIKYOGEN runs with the big boys shouldn't be such a surprise, as Kawachi was a talent who contributed to such LPs as Tokyo Kid Brothers' amazing version of THROW AWAY THE BOOKS, WE'RE GOING OUT IN THE STREETS and Kimio Mizutani's flawed-but-excellent A PATH THROUGH HAZE, as well as contributing the inner-sleeve artwork for the latter. In his later years, Kawachi moved north to become a farmer in Hokkaido, keeping his musical hand in by writing TV commercials. A couple of years ago, his crap old Group Sounds band reformed, but are said to have Played KIRIKYOGEN in its entirely.
(go back)Emerging from the woodland murk of a single pulsing analogue synthesiser, Brast Burn's glorious chaos was a vital and catchy hog-wash of Cajun chanting and slide guitar, massed steighbells, Amon Düül I-style single-note piano, recorders and tin whistles, rudimentary electronics, highly reverb'd hand drums played by people trying to convince us they possess a full kit, and gnarly repetitious lead vocals in the style of the Race Marbles' 'Like A Dribbling Fram' off PEBBLES VOLUME 3, or maybe Exuma the Obeah Man. 'Sewer mind, sewer mind, sewer mind Sue' sings the head shaman over and over. Hey, this guy thinks he's singing an Everly Brothers hit, and Sewermind Sue is Runaround Sue's errant kid sister. Unknown in Japan except for their loose association with the equally catchy and bizarre Karuna Khyal, Brast Burn's sole LP DEBON is an unconditional classic. Released on the private Voice Records label in 1974, the LP is split into two epic side-long tracks simply entitled 'Debon Part One' and 'Debon Part Two'. It all takes place in a proper studio and sounds pretty damned stereo, but it's the interface between the electronics, sound FX and fastidious Noggin the Nog jamming that sets this lot apart from other similar efforts. This ain't just another crackle-and-pop test like some stuff Japanese hippies laid at our door. Nevertheless, even though the sleeve states 'Produced by Tokiyushi Nemoto and available from Nakano Record Shop', no one knows who they were, what town they came from or even what prefecture. Quite a feat considering the obsessive Japanese quest to learn the provenance of everything.
(go back)This rampant album of four enormous fuzz'n'percussion wipe-outs almost fulfils its ambition to avoid American musical influence and achieve 'its poetic truth', tromping through long grass with Ikuzo Orita's 'super session' guitar star Kimio Mizutani in tow. The enormous twelve-minute opener 'Wanyama Na Mapambazuko' (Animals and Dawn) heralds the sunrise with tone farting sub-bass guitar (filtered through a Moog synthesiser) as tribal drums respond, hestitantly at first, before whipping the track into life with a 6/4 proto-metal riff courtesy of axe mangier Kimio Mizutani. African voices call-and-answer awhile until crude power-trio riffology opens out making way for yet more patent Mizutani soloing. Side one concludes with the nine minutes of 'Na Tu Penda Sana' (Asking for Love), whose African 'Sympathy for the Devil'-style introduction collapses into a tribal guitar chant of Sammy Hagar Montrose-period simplicity (!). The riffing subsides into lone wooden hand drums, before increasing pace into a formidable crescendo of utter Mizutani fuzz-axe destruction. Side two begins with a brief angular early Zappa-style theme, which introduces the epic clock-ticking eight-minute grooves of 'Vita (battle, fighting, war)', complete with field recordings of animal noises and chanting. Echoes of Magical Power Mako's Tsugaru' or even Nihilist Spasm Band are conjured up in Mizutani's frenzied Japanese banjo freak-out, before the eight-minute concluding grooves of 'Pygmy' devolve into a repetitive Afro-Funkadelic groove similar to the longer People grooves on their Mizutani-propelled 'super session' CEREMONY -BUDDHA MEETS ROCK. This excellent experimental LP parallels the tradition of Can's Ethnological Forgery Series.
(go back)It's a dead cert that those who dismiss this Flower debut as a covers album have never heard it, only heard about it. For its grooves contain such monstrous modifications that each track leaves the starting block a lull metre lower than the hoary jalopy originals, a Ferrari where once was a Ford. For a start, Flower Travellin' Band do not cover the song 'Black Sabbath'. Instead, they let its tyres down and ride it across a ploughed field. They do to it what no British band could ever have done, dissolving the 4/4 rhythm into an ambient metal assault over which Joe sings the lyrics when he feels like it Flower's version of '21st Century Schizoid Man' ejects all the nasty sax flourishes and prissy jazz snare drums of the original and gets down to the real power-trio business that rift always demanded. In this mood, you even begin to believe they could have taken Yes's proto-metal epic 'Heart of the Sunrise' and turned it into the Troggs' 'Feels Like a Woman'. And if you shudder at the thought of Fiower approaching an archaic standard such as 'House of the Rising Sun', open up your mind to receive the proto-'Stairway to Heaven' shock-of-a-lifetime. For Rower have taken away those chords and, lo, the arrangement hath been lifted up umpteen cosmic notches. By the end of it, the 'House...' has been displaced by the 'Land of the Rising Sun' and Joe's sense of loss has us all blarting like babbies. Moreover, sole original 'Louisiana Blues' is nearly sixteen minutes of 1970 Dodge Challenger highway grind. Epic.
(go back)Music that evokes the Khanate Golden Horde invading eastern Turkey, anyone? Yes, please. This album is full of Cossack knees-ups played by prog-punks with a Magma fixation, its strident bass guitars echoed by Klaus Blasquiz'n'Stella Vanderesque banshee themes, as though Caesar had sent Carl Orff's Carmina Burana through a MEKANÏK DESTRUKTÏW KOMMANDÖH filter. Kan Mikami gets to do lots of shouting, while the main themes are held together by charming, stumbling solo piano pieces from Caesar himself, fascinatingly reminiscent of Bryan Ferry's contributions to the first Roxy Music LP. When I was a young boy I loved this book...' writes playwright Shuji Terayama cheerfully, in the sleevenotes; then tells us that it's the unhappy story of a boy who, after his mother's death, is brought up by his father and a stepmother who can't stand him, treats htm mercilessly and drives him out of the family home. Eventually, the boy dresses as his mother and, in full make-up, returns home to off the offenders. Unfortunately, this album does feature rather more dialogue than I'd have liked to offer you. But its unfathomable plot holds listeners spellbound through the sheer exotic nature of the sounds and vocal delivery. In 2002, P-Vine Records put out a perfect facsimile of this LP, complete with gatefold inner lyric sheet and original cover art. Those in need of more music delivered in this archly stentorian manner should search out Caesar's 1980 album SEALBREAKING. Although lo-fi in quality and mainly available through bootlegs, it nevertheless contains much of my favourite Caesar music - ten headlong tracks of Magma-meets-early Stranglers/Music Machine riffothons.
(go back)Kings of the biker scene, Gedo is what I'd imagined Murahatchibu would've sounded like. If only! Indeed, Gedo's only disappointment is that, like their Western festival equivalents the Pink Fairies, they had a fondness for old-fashioned rock'n'roll from time to time. Still, this LP is an absolute must-have, scorching with manic hard rock. GEDO opens with 'Kaori' (Scent), a proto-High Rise monster, while 'Nigeruna' (Don't Run Away) is an empty 'Hey Joe' driven by the staccato drums and elastic bass. 'Gedo' is the Pistols' 'Liar' years too early, but 'Rock'n'roll Baka' (Rock'n'roll Stupid) is just shit 'Johnny B. Goode'. However, side one closes with the fabulous 'Dance Dance Dance', whose hybrid of the Velvets' 'Rock'n'roll' and the Byrds' 'So You Wanna Be a Rock'n'roll Star' tails out in a drum solos, in-jokes, high jinx and chants of 'Gedo' (Believe me, this is typical of every Gedo record I've ever encountered). Side-two opener 'Byoon Byoon' is a more coherent version of High Rise's 'Outside Gentiles'. And although 'Itsumo No Tokoro De' (At the Usual Place) is a useless 6/8 50s re-tread, it's followed by the nihilistic riffery of 'Kusatta Inochi' (Rotten Lite), full of lyrics about rotting pigs and fool's paradises. The Stooges finally rear their heads in 'Kanryo' (Completed), which features amazingly slithery axe from Hideto Kano in a truly full-on juggernaut white-lightning tailout. Dunno why but the record ends with Hideto Kano's unnecessary Latino acoustic ballad 'Yasashii Uragirio' (Tender Betrayal), followed by the sound FX of 'Sutato', as the band exit on massive Honda hogs, gaining them instant cult rock'n'roll status.
(go back)Taking its name from the US-only Rolling Stones album DECEMBER'S CHILDREN, this mighty double-CD is essential to the Rallizes story as one of the few available recordings of the band with former Murahatchibu/Dynamites guitarist Fujio Yamacauchi. Recorded in Tokyo's Yaneura district on 13th December 1980, the album opens with an eight-minutes twin-axe spectacular version of 'Kori no Hono'o' (Flames of Ice), vastly different to the version that opens BLIND BABY... before opening out into the thirteen-minute distorto-soul of 'Yoru Yori Fukaku' (Deeper Than the Night), Fujio's mournful wailing adding a ZUMA-like quality. The hiccupping quarter-of-an-hour version of 'A Distant Memory' included herein is a loping and inverted funeral karaoke, returning to a twenty-minute brain-basting 'Deeper Than the Night', the two guitars possessed by stellar feedback and total chordal indifference. Disc one concludes with a romping Frankie Laine eleki posse-in-a-blender version of 'The Night Assassins' that tumbles over itself until everyone is playing the chord sequence according to their own calendar. Note: disc two claims to commence with another 'Yoru, Ansatsusha no Yoru' (Night of the Assassins), but on this version substitutes the original Wakabayashi-period 1969 line-up playing the full nineteen minutes of 'Smokin' Cigarette Blues'. An amazing bonus. Then, 'Shiro'i Mezame' (White Awakening) is sixteen minutes of pure Velvets' LIVE 1969, Mizutani dragging his axe through rudimentary melody into bagpipe hell'n'back. Then commence the drones of 'Enter the Mirror', herein being the finest 'Heroin'-style version I've ever heard, in true Rallizes fashion, this epic double concludes with yet another cinematic carouse through The Last One'.
(go back)Included here as representatives of the early 70s festival scene, Datetenryu was an obscure cousin to Communist agitator bands Zuno Keisatsu (Brain Police), Yellow, Les Rallizes Denudés and Murahatchibu. Led by organist Masao Tonari, the band on UNTO played a frantic hogwash of soul-based progressive space rock that inhabited the same territory as the Soft Machine's debut-LP period (imagine 'Why Are We Sleeping?' or 'Hope for Happiness' by way of '21st Century Schizoid Man'). Mainly Instrumental, their music is a space trek through endless R&B riffs and classic soul moments, like some ever unfolding medley. UNTO purports to be what the band members would have chosen had they had the opportunity to release an official debut album at the time, ie: a total barrage of lo-fi progressive garage rock. The twenty-minute epic 'Doromamire' (Covered All Over in Mud) is the killer, but really it's all one insane 47-minute-long rush. Formed in May 1971, at Kyoto Sangyo ('Industrial') University, Datetenryu was a right bunch of refusenik long-hairs. Masao Tonari set up sideways on to the rest of the band, while drummer Shogo Ueda played, head down, facing away from the stage pointing towards Tonari's Yamaha organ. Indeed, guitarist Kei Yamashita appears to have been permanently out of proceedings in the same way that Yes's Pete Banks and the Nice's Davy O'List were forever being sidelined. Datetenryu's biggest claim to fame, however, was the presence of bassist/singer Hiroshi Narazaki, who later became Hiroshi Nar and joined Les Rallizes Denudés, thereafter forming his own very excellent band the Niplets, who continue to perform right up to the present time.
(go back)Tripped-out vocal drones, ominous bowed glissandos courtesy of an upright bowed viola and a one-string Chinese fiddle, deep meditations undermined by reedy snake charmer and scattered bamboo rods bouncing across the polished floor; this direct descendant of Taj Mahal Travellers is a certified classic of improvisation, occupying the same general space as that incredible ensemble. Formed by occasional Taj Mahal Traveller guest Kazuo Imai and featuring ten members as opposed to the Travellers' seven, East Bionic Symphonia had very much their own sound. Side one's '7.30pm-7.47pm' is less satisfying simply because it's too short, whereas side two's '8.15pm-8.43pm' is highly repeatable. Mentor Takehisa Kosugi edited both of the tracks. On 18th October 1997, six of the ten original members re-united for a hugely successful four-hour-long concert in Tokyo's Asahi Square, recording the results for a future album. The continued presence of Chie Mukai's bowed kokyu, Kazuo Imai's viola da gamba and Yasushi Ozawa's bowed bass guitar ensured that the reunion lacked only certain percussive elements from the original dectet, though beaten tambourine, orchestral samples and electronics heaped new exotic elements of static interference into the stew, contributing to an overall sound reminiscent of a Shuji Terayama soundtrack. Unlike most cynical reunions, however, the six musicians felt it dishonourable to capitalise on their original name without the presence of Kaoru Okabe, Tatuo Hattori, Kazuaki Hamada and Masaharu Minegishi, choosing instead to release the resulting album COLLECTIVE IMPROVISATION an PSF Records under the new name Marginal Consort.
(go back)Although billed by Columbia's marketing team as Masahiko Satoh's latest 'Composition for Percussion & Jazz Orchestra', this monumental sonic slab, played by New Herd Orchestra and conducted by leader Toshiyuki Miyami, sounds more like a bizarre hybrid of T. Dream's ELECTRONIC MEDITATION and John Coltrane's ASCENSION. Split into two single tracks, the music drifts in over several minutes under a foggy blanket of low-grade funereal brass, a cold clammy cosmic conductor's hand of doom controlling the atmosphere, the huge brass section anonymously aping Edgar Froese's Mellotron 400 brass samples, before bursting forth suddenly with the shamanic paroxysms of Yamashita's percussion and cloudbursts of spectacular atonal brass and wind sections. Indeed, the line-up of New Herd musicians here is in itself so monumental that it creates a unique Middle European sound, like the movie soundtrack from some imaginary Hungarian Creation Myth. The music then slowly fades out like some death ship passing in the stillness of night. Suddenly, every instrument tears into life with peals of wanton sax sections, urban blues trumpets, and Yamashita's berserk percussive freak-outs. Besides the standard drums, piano, bass and guitar, a brass section of four trumpets, four trombones, four saxophones and a bassoon tear the soul apart with their vicious combinations of meditative low-church drones and uplifting Zoroastrian fire lights. At times, the music becomes a drums-and-percussion tantrum between Yamashita and drummer Yoshisaburo Toyozumi, the percussionist's close-miked and high-tuned drums boggling the senses as the seething and sibilant rush of cymbals leaves the brain feeling like a tiny ship caught in the eye of a hurricane.
(go back)Drifting in on Takehisa Kosugi's radio receivers and frequency oscillators, the stillness of the performers during the opening moments of this debut is such that even the slamming doors of embarrassed late arrivals at Tokyo's Sogetsu Kaikan Hall make major contributions to the music. Seiji Nagai's lone trumpet and Kosugi's bowed violin occupy most of the space until heavily treated harmonica oozes through the murk, and the four echo machines of electronics operators Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa, Yuki Tsuchiya and Kinji Hayashi fuse together to render any evaluation of the original sound sources quite impossible. The twenty-six minutes of Taj Mahal Travellers between 6.20pm and 6.46pm' covers the whole first side of this album, the electric contrabass and tuba occasionally calling out to each other like rival walruses vying for possession of the same stretch of iceberg. Side two is split into two twelve-minute and fifteen-minute pieces, the first catching them adrift in a chorale of Buddhist chanting from within some ancient cave of the dead. Unusually, the first track, Taj Mahal Travellers between 7.03pm and 7.15pm', concludes with Michihiro Kimura's devolved bluesy electric guitar and Kosugi's strummed violin à la mandolin. Taj Mahal Travellers between 7.50pm and 8.05pm' ploughs an entirely rural violin furrow within the realms of Henry Flynt's BACK PORCH HILLBILLY BLUES. Fans of this recording may wish to search out Taj Mahal Travellers' performance on the OZ DAYS LIVE vinyl bootleg, where - sandwiched between Les Rallizes Denudés and Acid Seven's group - they kicked up a veritable shitstorm whilst playing (on one of their rare occasions) in front of a rock crowd. Those showboaters!
(go back)More of a musical tribute to a cultural hero than a genuine opera, Toshi Ichiyanagi's massive project nevertheless united almost every essential musical genre in this impressively packaged homage to Japan's own Andy Warhol/Roy Lichtenstein modern-art titan Tadanori Yoko'o. Delivered in a magnificent presentation box over four sides of 12" vinyl, side one of the opera opens with a lone femafe voice singing a cappella, the work continuing into Ichiyanagi's synthesiser drone, under which rousing traditional Japanese military songs play, thence to a rehearsal session for the gentle ballad 'Man's Pure Heart', and the side's closing track of sound FX and boxing audience. The Flowers' magnificent instrumental 'I'm Dead' occupies at of side two and seven minutes of side three, followed by the spoken-word soundtrack 'Song of New York', and the evocative orchestral cut-ups of 'Kayo Musicale'. The final side commences with the disorientating love Blinded Ballad', a bizarre combination of mawkish enka and musique concrète, thence to the full-on experimental blast of musique concrète and analogue synthesiser that is 'Spite Song'. The opera concludes ironically with a bossanova homage to Tadanori Yoko'o sung by hardman actor Ken Takakura, star of multiple gangster movies. It was the composer's intention that listeners should play the picture discs while scanning the sumptuous box art and flicking through an accompanying set of Yoko'o-designed playing cards. In 2005, Bridge Records re-released me entire package as four CDs in a 12" box, complete with playing cards.
(go back)Taj Mahal Travellers had a dedication to capturing the moment that ran far deeper than even T. Dream during ZEIT or Popol Vuh's brief AFFENSTUNDE period. Hail, these guys made so much of even their non-moments that the real moments seemed like declarations of war in comparison. But if the music of those aforementioned Krautrockers was a ship adrift on an ocean, then the music of Taj Mahal Travellers was Noah's Ark encircling the eye of the storm itself. For this double-LP, their final album, the ensemble opted for a more acoustically pure approach, even naming their four side-long epics simply 'I', 'II', 'III' and 'IV'. Underplaying the deep theta meditations of the first record, here the Taj Mahal Travellers fuss with their primitive electronic gadgetry and Ur-babble like endangered species seeking collective closure, this album's refusal to dwell in deep ponds of reverb ensuring that the first clawing steps towards the individual are forever approaching, and ail achieved with such a remarkable sense of orchestration that a strangely syncopated universal funk develops between the six. Their deployment of primitive electronic delays, in which certain sounds they had made were played back, just milliseconds later through speakers, created for each musician a 'wyrd', or shadow figure who is soon working almost in tandem with his sacred twin. For hour upon hour, Taj Mahal Travellers heap more and more ingredients - mainly voices and percussion - into their dronality, until the sound source is as mysterious as the roots of monotheism. Despite being the weakest of their albums, AUGUST 1974 remains deeply out-there music for deeply out-there circumstances.
(go back)Standing midway between early Faust and Michel Bulteau's Mahogany Brain, this sextet of teenage ne'er-do-wells tears the walls apart throughout this mid-'70s avant-garde retrospective, battering down the doors of pre-conception with an array of melodicas, shaken piggy-banks, primitive electric-guitar blitzes, percussion wipe-outs and all-purpose mung worship. Over nine aimless (endless/nameless) tracks of avant-chaos, acid-campfire and post-apocalyptical freefölk, Seishokki also conjure up the ghosts of the Red Crayola, Taj Mahal Travellers, Amon Düül, and Yo Ha Wa 13. Seishokki was formed while its members - Hitoshi Matsumoto, Yuji Nakamura, Masanori Komatsu, Yasuaki Harabuchi, Tetsuya Takashio and Ikuro Takahashi - were still at school in the far-northern island of Hokkaido during 1975. Most of the musicians became future underground movers and shakers, especially drummer Takahashi, who went on to perform with a variety of '90s bands, including Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Keiji Heino's Fushitsusha, Asahito Nanjo's High Rise, and LSD March. ORGANS OF BLUE ECLIPSE was Seishokki's sole album and is mostly a collection of home freak-outs taken from the period 1975-77, recorded in an outbuilding on the banks of the river Chubetsu Gawa, on the outskirts of their home town Asahikawa. However, the final land most 'rock') piece on the LP, the nine-and-a-half-minutes of 'Abashiri Blues', was recorded live at a local club. Apparently, one track was excluded from the record because its lyrics were too excruciatingly ridden with teen-age angst for its now-middle-aged protagonists to bear listening to! The album received a limited vinyl release in 2005 on the Siwa label.
(go back)Two vast pieces of highly evocative theatre music, one recorded in 1959 using orchestral scores and tape manipulation, the other a piece of musique concrète that surfaced in 1963, and both as current as anything emanating from the twenty-first-century underground scene. With my own Krautrocksampler now twelve years old, and the re-issue programme of so many highly rare experimental works now proceeding apace, it's not so very difficult to understand why this early experimental minimalist music remains so listenable to twenty-first-century ears. Indeed, we have this past decade expanded our melted plastic brains to such an extent that no one in their right mind would dare anticipate where next our musical pleasure centres will take us. Joji Yuasa's music, created over a period of months (rather than the long hours in which digital technology allows us to achieve such material), conjures up the sound of ancestor spirits deep within the caves of the dead, Yuasa's highly manipulated sounds still close enough to their original source to tweak at our amphibian selves, not so far submerged below our everyday. While the real joy of this pre-synthesiser music is in the detail contained within each sound, the labour involved must have been excruciating. Those in need of more such music should search out Yuasa's AOI NO UE, also on the same 'Obscure Tape Music of Japan' series. Comprised of 1961's half-hour-long title track and the sixteen minutes of 'My Blue Sky', recorded fourteen years later in 1975, these amazing works are also available on the Omega Point label (Archive Series OPA-001).
(go back)Although it sounds more like the result of some '70s drugged-out post-HYMNEN Krautrock experiment, the 26-minute-long opening track of this sole Group Ongaku album was recorded on 8th May 1960, less than a month after Eddie Cochran's fatal accident. The other tracks are just as psychotic. As I wrote in my Head Heritage Album of the Month for September 2003: 'Group Ongaku's brutal muse was more sonique-concrète than musique-concrète. Opening with kitchen sounds, bottles clinked together, wild spaced-out women's voices, hoovers, insane pianos, shortwave radio, tannoy voices, etc., it was the performances of the musicians of the ensemble itself that set MUSIC OF GROUP ONGAKU apart from every other bunch... Assaults on the microphones are particularly violent on this album, as are... well, let's call it natter pure and simple, Employing the principle that foreign voices sound more exotic because we don't know what they're on about, Group Ongaku included all of these already standard experimental elements and devices in their record and still came out of it sounding like rock stars - proof that it's "who-does-it" not "what-notes-get-played",' Strangest of all is the forward-thinking manner in which this music was achieved. For, despite employing such standard and stylish early-'60s accessories as a guitarist (by the name of Genichi Tsuge), at least half of the music herein was generated through tape playback, over which the ensemble spewed further venomous offences. Gargling, surprised exclamations, irritating hoovering, a too-early garbage collection, clarinet rehearsals, cut-up tapes of all the aforementioned tells us it's THE FAUST TAPES thirteen years ahead of its time.
(go back)Delivered to the public in a mysterious cover whose bright red Obi-strip screamed: The eternal word woven into creation with eleven keyboards,' Far East Family Band's monumental debut played every progressive rock trick in the book and then some, its interior awash with lyrics sheets, Floydian pix of the band surrounded by mountains of equipment, inner sleeves depicting amazing sunsets visible through an outer decorated with a modified Sri Yantra, and sleevenotes à la Moody Blues' Tony Clarke that discussed the music as part of an impending new age. Like the Moody Blues' LPs that spawned its mystical gush, the record itself sits midway between the late-'60s kid-in-a-sweet-shop mentality that wished to gorge itself on the stunning new sounds available through Mellotron, Moog and the like, and the post-war mindset that yearned for Everly Brothers innocence. Mostly, like the Moodies' IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD, this record is essential if only for the enriching sounds pouring forth. And although its lowest artistic moments scrape the sub-Graham Gouldman wellspring of twee, it's always buoyed up by the onslaught of the aforementioned eleven keyboards. Even hidden under their massive sonic arsenal, however, guitarist Hirohito Fukushima was a weak link whose rote solos may have sufficed once Klaus Schultze had embedded them within dollops of kosmische goo, but herein are too insubstantial to carry such a Spanish Armada of sound. This album's real genius belongs to leader Fumio Miyashita's clever subsuming of all five Moody Blues members into his own psyche, barfing out Mike Pinderisms with such aplomb that their provenance can never be immediately located.
(go back)Nihilist doom folk in advance of the third Velvet Underground album, anyone? Welcome to the debut with the most astonishingly original opening track ever. Imagine Love's 'Signed DC played by a free-jazz ensemble intent on uniting the Communist Bloc rage of 'European Sun' with a shed-building competition. Over this, a Jacques Brel with an inner child-of-five tells us it's okay to be possessed by the siren Marianne, as she cops a feel of his inner psyche and drags him into the sea. Inevitably, the impact of the rest of the LP is somewhat lessened by this beginning. 'Stop the Clock' is a quiet seashore 'Candy Says' with vibraphone, while Vacant World' is more proto-Emo self-pity ('Am I indulging myself? I feel as if I were dead, Am I dead?'), flute-driven existential angst from too many Gitanes, but great 'loud' quiet guitar solo. 'In the Broken Mirror' is what GS should have been, replete with fuzz guitars and ELECTRIC MUSIC-period Country Joe W. Coast groove, while side two closes with the storming epic fuzz 6/8 minor blues weepy 'Gloomy Flower'. 'Love Generation' opens side two with more minor-key Country Joe, while 'Bara-Manji' (Swastika Rose) has the singer being 'flagellated with a chain of roses' over a crazy country backing track like Tim Hardin's debut played 'Marianne' style. Although 'Where?' is smooth, generic and forgettably out-of-character (these guys sound like they're enjoying themselves!), love' is more excellent sobbing seashore Velvets Euro-tragedy. The album closes with the appropriately churchy '500 Miles from the Sky', an organ-only minor-key hymn with earnest spoken word from singer Yoshio Hayakawa.
(go back)Lo-fi 1975 studio recordings from one of only five surviving acetates, released in 2005 on red vinyl, these seven long generic sub-Stooges, proto-Friction jams sum up the late commune scene even better than Dr Acid Seven's own UNDERGROUND 70s CD series (which you still need, by the way). 3/3 was three ex-Circle Triangle Square members: Chiko Hige on drums, Hiroshi Higo on bass, and future No Waver/Friction leader Reck on guitar and vocals. With a sound akin to the Stooges' own RUBBER LEGS boot, y'all knows what you're in for, and it's right up there with the Notting Hill jams of Shagrat and the Fairies, occupying the kind of space you either need or don't give a damn about. 'Machine Song' opens the album somewhat dutifully, but 'Jump' deploys astral workouts of the highest Sir Lord Baltimore's 'Hard Rain Failin'' calibre. Side one's concluder 'Always' appropriates the tail-riff of Focus's 'Hocus Pocus', over which Reck heaps mucho excellent ernie-ernie licks. Side two's 'In a Cloud' is relentless Stones-meets-Stooge trudge sparked up by Reek's catchy proto-Fiction gob and defiantly R. Black-more axe worship. Another 'Hard Rain Failin'' rip kicks off 'Fly', fuelled by yet more Friction-style vocals ('Automatic-Fru'?), plus double-tracked guitar solos. 'Open a Window' is 'Raw Power', with Friction vocals and a classic wah-wah solo. The album closes with the downbeat Velvets-third-album-styled ballad 'Let It Flow'. Final comment: the back sleeve photos cannot be 3/3 as Reek's playing a Fender Musicmaster bass in one and looks well Richard Helled up. Born yesterday? They sure think we wuz! Definitely one for the X-Mass prezzie list, though.
(go back)Brutally apocalyptic Sabbath-informed post-Altamont blues hot on the heels of Flower Travellin' Band, this is a fantastic album of industrial strength played with all the artistic finesse of Olympic weightlifters. Containing just six monstrous workouts over fifty-three minutes, Kazuo Takeda & Co shamelessly tear off Hendrix's 'Voodoo Chile', Tony lommi's 'Sleeping Village' solo and all kinds of classical moments, as the rhythm section of drummer Masayuki Higuchi and bassist Masashi Saeki thunder through each track leaving vocalist Hiromi Osawa as isolated as Flower Travellin' Band's Joe Yamanaka was on that band's first two LPs (hey, this kind of tear-arse music is just as killer without a singer). LIVE opens with a near-quarter-of-an-hour version of Muddy Water's 'Rolling Stone', here reduced to one chord like Flower's equally long juggernaut drone 'Louisiana Blues'. The seven minutes of 'Nightmare' that follow are more of the same bile, suffused with that same incandescent glow that Takeda burned into every groove on DEMON ... 'Drinkin' Blues' closes side one with seven-and-a-half minutes of minor blues played like Neil Young, singer Osawa rendering the whole track truly tragic with the querulous ON THE BEACH-like tones of his fragile vocals. 'Demon & Eleven Children' here is even better than the excellent original, but still lacks the incredible dynamism of the GENYA CONCERT version. Takeda drags boring Carmen Maki out for five minutes of 'Understand', her strained larynx herein actually taking on a wonderfully strident early Siouxsie timbre. LIVE concludes with the band's radically empty eleven-minute version of Tobacco Road', and you wonder what made Takeda tick breaking up such a brilliant band right after this release.
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(go back)Imagine an LP half full of songs such as Erika Eigen's 'I Wanna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper' from the A CLOCKWORK ORANGE soundtrack. Mo Tucker's Velvet Underground ballads 'After-hours' and 'I'm Sticking with You', and that ubercute ditty Tonight You Belong to Me' that Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sang together in The Jerk. Imagine that same album also contains a few euphorically strung-out cosmic folk ballads somewhere in the style of Tim Buckley's Straight Records LP BLUE AFTERNOON united with Culture's super-sweet TWO SEVENS CLASH, but sung by a man and a woman in the manner of Emtidi's SAAT. Then imagine that some of that material was extended to cover a whole side of 12" vinyl, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser-style. Okay, now imagine there were two such LPs and that they were released one year apart on a cult label called Underground Record Club, and you've hit exactly where Itsutsu no Akai Fusen is coming from. It's a weird combination of urban torch songs, rural lovey-dovey indoor campfire, and transcendental tripped out meditative space folk. Both LPs were packaged in cosmic spacious gatefold sleeves, and the records were mainly sung by female singer Hideko Fujiwara and written by songwriter Takashi Nishioka, the man responsible for a fairly legendary Japanese album, MELTING GLASS BOX. that I've never really found much time for. These two records I like very much indeed, however, so they're hidden away at number 47 because I listen to them all the time, despite having never had much time for the Japanese early-'70s folk scene. So please excuse this review hyping two LPs simultaneously, but by 2012, you'll most likely have found time to investigate these records and, hopefully, are by now digging them.
(go back)Emanating from the late '60s Shinjuku futen scene that hung around Ogi and the Go-GoCafe, [circle triangle square] was a painted bunch of commune rockers and percussion tribe second to none, whose random bells, flute, and remedial tea-tray flaylings (though horribly more-ish in a rent-a-freak Noggin the Nog meets Towser manner) were still way more like the Godz or Nihilist Spasm Band than the deep theta-space obliterations of Taj Mahal Travellers. Indoor stoned parrot-torture cutlery & crockery grooves, anyone? Then check out this 2003 compendium of [circle triangle square]'s three original self-financed, self-pressed, hand-painted and hand-sleeved earty LPs, released on Tokyo's Captain Trip Records, complete with enough crackles'n'hiss to remind you constantly that this was mastered from the kind of ancient vinyl that makes Robert Johnson sound digital. Tracks burst in then stop... then re-start. It's a punky meditation. Led by future Murahatchibu drummer 'Kant' Watanabe, [circle triangle square] are part of an elite bunch of Shinjuku futen bands who actually made it on to record. By the mid-'70s, members Reck, Chiko Hige and Tôhchan had formed the Stooge-alike power trio 3/3. Thereafter, Reck formed the excellent No Wave band Friction, and even played bass for Lydia Lunch at the tail-end of Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. [circle triangle square] 'reformed' in the early twenty-first century for a collaboration album with psychedelic oldies Marble Sheep. But like many so-called re-formations, the [circle triangle square] line-up was a fudge, based around 'Kant' Watanabe and containing fifteen members where once there were only five. As the Shinjuku futen scene was such a 'you had to be there' thing anyway, I wish they'd left it alone.
(go back)Somewhere between the Doors and Santana, the fuzzy soul of 3+3-period Isley Brothers, and the poppy English prog rock of Pete Banks-period early Yes and THE LEAST WE CAN DO IS WAVE TO EACH OTHER-period Van der Graaf Generator is this romantic, soul-influenced album ISHOKU-SOKUHATSU ('Dangerous Situation'), Occasionally detestable but frequently exquisite, the record's component parts are always righteous so long as these gentlemen get them in the correct order. From mock-Italian harmonies and bossanova rhythms, they'lI thrust straight into pure Van der Graaf Generator as played by the first Alice Cooper band, then off into some American guitar-epic treks, perhaps with a 13/8 moment thrown in for good measure. This album is progressive pop music in a similar manner to that of solo Todd Rundgren or even the Zombies' experimental LP ODESSY & ORACLE [sic]. Okay, if your maiden aunt were to have designed a generic rock soundtrack for a movie about 70s prog youth, it most likely would have sounded just like this does. Nevertheless, side two's epic title track is killer once you get acclimatised to their cultural kleptomania. Moreover, they pull every trick in the book to lure you in there, mainly through keyboard player Hidemi Sakashita's wanton use of 'Riders on the Storm' electric-piano licks ... oh, and his extravagant deployment of Mellotrons, Hammond organs and Minimoogs. Considerate bass player Shinichi Nakamura contributes only the most uberobvious Ray Manzarek bass lines, while guitarist Katsutoshi Morizono's exhilaratingly generic rock axe certainly contributes masses to easing our egression into their sound. Hey, who's to say every band has to break barriers?
(go back)We're not here to praise this Helpful Soul album, it's shit. Who wants another quarter-of-an-hour of 'Spoonful'? No one. Who wants inept renditions of Hendrix's 'Fire'? Exactly. Which makes side one's closing song - the 10-minutes-and-33-seconds of 'Peace for Fools' - alt the more remarkable; it's a strung-out slab of monolithic genius down there with anything on Blue Cheer's VINCEBUS ERUPTUM, or the Guess Who's appallingly gauche Doors rip-offs 'Friends of Mine' and Trucking off across the Sky'. 'Peace for Fools' is the kind of nihilistic tragedy that kicks Lost Aaraaff's black-clad dick into the dust, and makes Keiji Heino sound like he secretly cares! Junio Nakahara is the Fall's Mark Smith before he became a professional Northerner, you know that innocent time around 'Bingo Master's Breakout' before he became more cynical than Zappa? Yup, Nakahara is that guy, and his band are Luddites armed with pitchforks and sharpened shovels, punks from the American school at Kobe who grab anything to hand, even appropriating Kim Fowley's OUTRAGEOUS vocal delivery from the 'California Hayride' freak-out, propelling it along with the bass riff from 'In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida'; shameless errant genius on the slug-trail of the Doors' 'Five to One', the Chambers Brothers' 'Time Has Come Today', Funkadelic's 'I'll Bet You', anticipating Alice Cooper's LOVE IT TO DEATH-period proto-Jimbo doggerel by twenty-four months. Like some Too Perfect retro scam conjured up by latterday pranksters to cane our melted plastic brains, you expect to hear Burton Cumming's 'cocaine'n'morphine too, lots of shit to get you high'-rap oozing out, That this clod-plod is all the real deal is ... unreal.