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John K · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:29 am Post subject: Japan

Not the band Japan but the country. I'm on a bit of a Japanese kick at the moment and I've dug out all my albums by Japanese artists (a lot more than I was expecting) and am working my through them.

Yesterday I spun:
Up-Tight Early Years, an absolutely brilliant band. Psychedelic rock in a "Sister Ray" kind of way. I've another CD by them but this is the best of the two. The kind of music you dress in black and wear sunglasses indoors to.

Boris Akuma no Uta, my favourite Boris album. Starts off with a sludgey drone piece which seems to last forever before exploding into a few short, balls to the floor rock outs. Ear splitting at lower volumes, transcendental at higher volumes, it is fucking super.

C.C.C.C. Chaos is the Cosmos, one of the original Japanoise bands. This is a new(ish) CD by them, about 45 minutes of fantastic noise. Like Merzbow but not as abrasive. There are vocals but like My Bloody Valentine you can only hear them occassionally (but I don't speak Japanese so even if I could hear them they wouldn't make sense).

Right now I'm listening to Mono's Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined which is gorgeous and a complete change in mood from the previous three albums. I think most of you know Mono already but they're like Explosions in the Sky but superior (not as samey).

More to come!
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yan · Eumetazoa Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 2188

Check out Sgt. , Kealy.
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Cytokines, go!

John K · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:23 pm Post subject:

Oh yeah, I forgot about them. What was the address for their site again? I remember you saying they're a bitch to google.
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yan · Eumetazoa Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 2188

Turns out they're not too hard to find if you use myspace's search engine.
I think it was http://www.myspace.com/sgtofficial
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Cytokines, go!

dwight_showman · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 8:48 pm Post subject:

very good stuff
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all's fair in love and war

John K · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 11:57 pm Post subject:

It's bonkers, it's deadly! Only in Japan could a band that considers itself "Indie / Emo / Jazz" exist. I see they have an album with Damo Suzuki, I'll have to buy that (as his gig with The Jimmy Cake nearly made me explode with delight, plus he's responsible for one of the best albums ever (Can's Tago Mago)). The samples from it sound brilliant.

Well continuing my journey through the music of Japan I had three stops today. The first was the unearthly noise of Incapacitants and some of their 5CD box set, Pariah Tapes. It's a load of old cassette releases on CD and it's fairly rough going. Whereas C.C.C.C. are super intense, they still pull you in. Incapacitants are super intense but they're out to hurt you. The hilarious thing is that the two of them are bankers during the day and noise lunatics by night.

I then moved on to an album by Sitaarh Tah! who are a sitar orchestra. So think hypnotic, psychedelic drones (I feel I'm going to use the word psychedelic a lot in this thread) and excellent throat singing. Semimimimimin is one long track and it is superb. I'm not sure if it's still available but it's definitely worth checking out.

My third and final artist for today was Ryoji Ikeda (whenever I try to type his name I always write Ryoji Ikea

) and his +/- album. All his work is based around the concept of data and digitisation (I think) and he works a lot with mathematical formulae and disruption of digital coding or simply by converting data from one form into audio. It sounds a lot better than I make it sound and there are far more eloquent descriptions of his work dotted around the web.
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John K · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 9:50 pm Post subject:

This morning I opened with the ray of sunshine that is Challenge! by Yuya Uchida and the Flowers. This is a collection of covers that are fairly standard (The Doors, Cream, Janis Joplin, etc.) but given with a bit of balls. The album was released in 1969 and sounds like the end of the decade. It would be just another sunny but largely forgettable album from long ago if it weren't for what would come next. The two singers would leave and the group's name would change to the Flower Travellin' Band. They would explode out of nowhere and fly through the sun in a psychedelic, guitar-fuelled spaceship. More of that at a later date...

This afternoon the postman arrived with a package from the US containing three albums of Japanese psychedelic glory. The first one I listened to was unusual for the psych scene in Japan in that the singer is female. Shizuka's Live/Traditional Aesthetics is a dreamy and disorientating recording from a concert in 1995. I know next to nothing about her or her band but I like what I hear. It's hard to describe but it's like the My Bloody Valentine tracks where Belinda sings with the fuzz turned off but still oppressively loud.

My third and final Japanese album for the day came from a group called Aihiyō. These guys are heavy weights when it comes to Japanese psych. Drummer Ikuro Takahashi has played with pretty much everyone who is anyone in the scene (and even those who are no one) and bassist Masami Kawaguchi has also worked his way through Tokyo in various bands. Guitarist Keiji Haino should need no introduction but I'll give him one anyway. He is known for his radical approach to guitar but can play pretty much anything. His solo career is lengthy and he is a vital part of Fushitsusha, Japan's second best band (more on them and the best band, Les Rallizes Denudes, later). He is perhaps most famous for bottling me.

Anyway, this Aihiyō album is great. It's not as atonal as Haino's solo stuff but it's still very rough. Think of all the noise parts in Velvet Underground songs and make a band out of them. It's mainly their own material but there are a couple of covers on the album, the most impressive being a 15 minute version of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". It's only in the last five minutes that the riff even becomes close to recognisable! Awesome!
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John K · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 1:47 pm Post subject:

Just one album from Japan yesterday and yet another from the unspeakably good aRCHIVE label: Narita Munehiro's Ether. Munehiro is the guitarist with High Rise, yet another Japanese psychedelic rock band. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten around to getting any of their albums yet. This album sees Munehiro playing solo gutair. At times it is grating and at others it is inspiring. However, it always sounds like if he had a band backing him it would be unbeatable. So I must buy some High Rise and see if this is so!
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John K · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 10:05 pm Post subject:

More tales from the east.

This morning I cleared my sleepy head with Scumtron: A Tribute to Merzbow which although not strictly a Merzbow album, it is a fantastic disc. It features two Merzbow originals and remixes by Jim O'Rourke (from Sonic Youth), Autechre, Pansonic and others. Merzbow is one of those artists that I'm not sure if he's being sincere or taking the piss. Sometimes I feel like his albums are amazing, really mind altering experiences and at other times (sometimes the same albums) sound like a bad joke. Still you have to respect a man who is so singular in their attempts to deafen the world.

On a completely different note, I spent this evening listening to prog side of Japanese music. Firstly I gave Ghost's Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet album a spin. I know Guiney likes these guys and to be honest, I'm with him 100% because they're awesome. They sound like they are some alternative Pink Floyd who instead of going crappy and convoluted, went even more whimsical and psychedelic. This album is great because the first seven tracks fly by but the eighth and final track is over 30 minutes of jamming (what sounds like loads of different sessions collaged together).

The Far East Family Band are a true Japanese prog band from the 70s and the one album I have by them is Nipponjin, an album recorded with Klaus Schulze (Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel) for the German market. It's pretty awesome but a bit dated sounding at this stage. Julian Cope goes a bit mad on them in his Japrocksampler book (they're one of the 4-5 bands given a chapter to themselves) but I don't feel they're of the same class as the Flower Travellin' Band or Les Rallizes Denudes.
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John K · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 10:27 pm Post subject:

Actually, I'm listening to the second side of that Far East Family Band LP again and it's very like Ghost (or at least Ghost are very like it). The first side is a bit too stuffy but the second side is more fluid and jammy.
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mark · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 10:29 pm Post subject:

dwight_showman · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 10:44 pm Post subject:

<3 ghost
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all's fair in love and war

John K · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:25 pm Post subject:

Guiney, see if you can find any Far East Family Band mp3s online (none of their albums are in print as far as I know, the one I have I bought second hand on ebay), I think you'd dig them.

Yesterday I listened to the totally awesome Les Rallizes Denudés (they picked that name because Japanese people find the (made up) word "Rallizes" impossible to say

). I was listening to Yoda-Go-A-Go-Go (Flightless Bird Needs Water Wings) which is a compilation of various bits and bobs. There are three things you must know about Les Rallizes Denudés. First, there are no such thing as official recordings by them (there are authorised bootlegs and one studio session which was never officially released). Second, they are mesmeric and truly psychedelic, even in ropey sounding audience recordings. Third, their original bass player hijacked a plane and flew to Korea (the image on the front of this album is of the hijacking). They are, in short, amazing. They are quite like the Velvet Underground, that repetitive and primal beat combined with guitar that is equally delicate and violent. In the words of Homer Simpson: "Yes, yes, yes! this rocks!"

I also gave the Kikuri album a spin. This is the project of Keiji Haino and Merzbow that I saw in Geneva. The CD captures a pretty much identical performance but shorter and without the bottle. Unlike a lot of Merzbow, there is loads of variation on this album. Haino plays a few different instruments and it's not always a white noise assault. The last track is 30 minutes of pulsing rock freakout. Brilliant.

In the same package were a few other Haino-related CDs. I tried out Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki, a CD of Haino improvising on an acoustic guitar. Some of it is a bit tedious but when he gets into it, man he's good. It's not traditional guitar playing by any sense. As it is purely improvised, there is no structure, generally no rhythm and certainly no melody. It is just a raw appreciation of the sounds you can pull from a guitar.

Speaking of sounds you can pull from a guitar, Fushitsusha's Pathétique is full of them. This is Haino's main band (well not anymore, he fell out with the drummer and the bassist died a couple of months ago) and it is more rock based than his solo stuff, the drums and bass provide a rhythmical backbone for him to mental over. His electric guitar playing is unhinged, it all sounds like feedback being folded back in on itself. If a black hole did a face melting guitar solo, it would sound like this.
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Antic_Hay · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 7:30 am Post subject:

Far East Family Band!!

I want it!

And not only because my hero Klaus Schulze produced one of their albums and because I like member Kitaro's solo new-age noodling fluff

p.s.

Why no Japan (The Band)?

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"Music is aesthetisized frequency" - Klaus Schulze

"El sueno de la razon produce monstruos" - Francisco de Goya

John K · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 10:40 am Post subject:

dwight_showman · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 11:15 am Post subject:

kevin · Animalia Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 1892

i couldn't find a torrent on what.cd perhaps elsewhere?
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That was our last chance for a slow dance.

John K · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 2:42 pm Post subject:

Any blogs I've found with the album on it are full of dead links.
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John K · Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 12:15 pm Post subject:

I'm currently winning an auction for the Far East Family Band album on CD (I've found it on Amazon too but it's a lot cheaper from ebay). So it's out there.

Right, I've been a bit slack updating this thread but over the last few days I've been listening to a lot of Japanese music. Firstly some artists I've already mentioned above.

Up-Tight Five Psychedelic Pieces: This isn't quite as good as the Early Years album I mentioned in the first post of this thread but it's still a great album. The band still sound like the Velvets if the Velvets were brought up in Tokyo and even finish the album with an homage to "Sister Ray" called "Sweet Sister Session".

Keiji Haino Black Blues (electric) and Uchu Ni Karami Tsuite Iru Waga Itami: The former is an album of blues standards covered by Haino. They sound very little like the originals, you can hear the ghosts of the blues coming through but it's all utterly Haino. The interesting thing about this album (my very first Haino album) was that it came in two versions: an acoustic and an electric version. The covers are almost identical, the same image but reversed on one and not the other. Everything else looked the same. The second album sees Haino drop the guitar completely and play theremins and nothing else for an hour. It's a lot more varied than you'd expect, the early tracks being very noisy and abrasive and the last one being quite ambient. vgg.

Now for other artists I've been listening to over the last days.

Anoice Remmings: This is the only release I know of by this band and it's pretty good, in that it's both pretty and good. They're similar to Mono, that delicate post rock vibe. There's not really much to say about them apart from the fact that I like them and I think you will too (Guiney does already).

LSD March Empty Rubious Red: LSD March are, along with Up-Tight and Suishou No Fune (see below), flying the flag for Japanese psych rock. This is one of their older albums which got a reissue on the fantastic aRCHIVE label and mixes overdriven rock explosions with early Pink Floydish acoustic numbers. It is definitely one of their best releases.

Suishou No Fune The Light of Dark Night: This is a live album (another aRCHIVE release) with no track markings so you have to listen to the CD in one go. Suishou No Fune are another post-Rallizes, post-Velvets psych band and are one of the better and most consistent of the current generation. They and LSD March seem to be getting more attention amongst the international media compared to Up-Tight so their stuff is a bit easier to find.

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. Absolutely Freak Out (Zap Your Mind !!): A double live album from the AMT crew that hits all the important bases: huge rocking songs; weird sounds; massive solos and naked women on the cover. This is not their best album but it certainly sums them up well. The two versions of "Magic Aum Rock" on disc two show AMT on fire (not literally), I never get bored of them.

Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno Anthem of the Space: Aside from actually seeing AMT live, this is the definitive AMT experience in my humble opinion. Acid soaked, eastern folk influences and 70s prog synths and an astounding jam that goes on forever; this is it, this is the most awesome AMT release ever. I cannot recommend it enough. Go! Go buy it! Hear it yourself!

Kousokuya Echoes from Deep Underground: I've had this CD/DVD live set for about a year (or maybe more) but only listened to it for the first time this morning. I know next to nothing about the band apart from the fact that they formed in the late 70s and are (you guessed it) a Velvets-inspired psych rock jam band. I'm guessing they wore black and sunglasses (I'll confirm that when I watch the DVD). This recording was made in 2001 and is the only official video of the group. It's white hot.
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John K · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:53 pm Post subject:

Mono One More Step and You Die: This is my favourite Mono album, the second track is immense. The whole thing sits together brilliantly and there's the right mix between laid back and huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge loud parts. I'm sorry I didn't go to see them whenever they've played here, for some reason I always forget that there's so much variety in their albums and write them off as Explosions in the Sky soundalikes.

Flower Travellin' Band Satori: Now this is the shit. I previously mentioned this band in its older, covers-driven form of Yuya Uchida and the Flowers. They changed their name to the Flower Travellin' Band for their second album (Anywhere) and although that was mainly covers as well, they were much ballsier and heavy as sin. This album is their masterpiece, five mainly instrumental and transcendental jams from here to forever. It's impossible to listen to this and not grin like you're on drugs, it's fucking awesome. (And Grails fans may like to note that Grails covered one section of Satori on their Interpretations EP on Southern Records.)

Kawabata Makoto Hosanna Mantra: This is a solo album from the man at the centre of the Acid Mothers Temple universe, the cosmic biker guitarist Kawabata Makoto. This album is a bit patchy, the last two songs (out of four) are a bit aimless. However the first two (which last for about 40 minutes together) are absolutely stunning. Layers of bowed guitar drones with Makoto playing over it all as only he can.

Ghost Hypnotic Underworld: From 2004, this is the first Ghost album I bought after reading a fascinating interview with them in The Wire. It's quite similar to the one I described earlier in the thread but of a slightly higher quality. The Pink Floyd cover at the end is particularly great. And yet again, this one gets the thumbs up from Guiney too (just in case you don't trust me).

C.C.C.C. Early Works: I've just played the first disc of this 4CD set (I've listened to the whole thing once before though) and it's a lot better on the second sitting. Instead of the punishing and relentless noise of Merzbow and the Incapacitants, at this time C.C.C.C. were more like early Einstuerzende Neubauten. There is a lot of space between the crushing sounds and what sounds like a lot of amplified metal being used as percussion. All the stuff in this box is live (apart from one studio piece I think) and it's worth tracking down if you're into that sort of thing.

Astro Jazkamer Hair Stylistics Motorcycle Fuck with the Ghost Rider: Astro is the solo project of C.C.C.C.'s Hiroshi Hasegawa and for this live recording he is joined by another Japanese noise group, Hair Stylistics, and the Norwegian noise group Jazkamer (who are savagely good). This (like most noise recordings) works for me some days and really doesn't on other days. It's worth buying though just for the hilarious Mr T photo on the inside.

Galax Never Ending Space Trackin': This is another Hiroshi Hasegawa release but less noisy than his Astro/C.C.C.C. work. This is more in Acid Mothers Temple territory (not surprising considering some of the AMT crew are playing with him). It's still not music in any traditional sense but it's got a strong 60s/70s space rock/electronic music vibe to it. It's good.

Numinous Eye With a Little Help: Numinous Eye is the project of American musician Mason Jones. This is a document of his tour of Japan where he played guitar each night with a different Japanese drummer. The first track features Tatsuya Yoshida (best known as Ruins and used to be in band with KK Null), the next two feature Takashi Shirahata (drummer with Up-Tight) and the rest of the album is with a local drummer called Komatsu (who is on fire!).

Merzbow Amlux: I was severely disillusioned with Merzbow for a long time there up until a couple of years ago when friends of mine played this album for me. It reminded me of just how good he can be. Rather than just being paint-strippingly loud for an hour, Amlux shows a much larger variation compared to other albums from around this time (6 years ago). Maybe he just finally figured out how to use his laptops comfortably (as his analog stuff was a lot more satisfying up until this album).

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