Album Reviews

This psychedelic noise-rock band from Japan is  definitely not for everyone but if your tastes run towards free-jazz when you think of jazz and you find the opening of Axis: Bold As Love structurally symphonic, you will surely dig Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso  U.F.O. and this album in particular, which definitely has a Hendrix vibe, right down to the cover art that has lettering like Are You Experience and some scantily clad gals like the UK Track edition of Electric Ladyland  that Jimi hated. 

Founded in 1995 by guitarist Kawabata Makoto, the group has had lineup and name shifts since then. It’s a four man group featuring Makoto, Tsuyama Atsushi on bass and vocals,Shimura Koji on drums and to this group as Brian Eno was to Roxy music in the early days, Higashi Hiroshi on analog synthesizer, though here it sometimes sounds as if the others are “treating” Mr. Atsushi’s work, rather than the other way around.

This band covers a wide range of noisy concepts on this double LP set pressed on multi-color “tie-dyed” vinyl. Distortion/feedback drenched electric guitar where Hendrix meets Derek Bailey encounters a kid in a candy store of analog oscillators, Moog synthesizers, ring modulators and a big-ass EMT plate reverb.

I would suggest beginning with side B’s “Wired Stinky Pussy Luver,” “Goodbye Big Asshole, “lyomange Of The Rising Sun,” and “Close Encounters of The Electric Spirits” because listening to side one is even more difficult and side two really gives you a good taste of what these guys are about.

Journey on no matter how many times part of your brain demands that you turn back. Some parts will remind you of Frank Zappa’s early avant-gard electronic stuff, while other things sound like the early electronic music compositions that came from academia during the1950s when all that was available were primitive oscillators and someone got the idea to turn it into music. 

The final track on side two consists of  very peaceful Bambi-like shakuhachi riffs assaulted by Godzilla with a bad case of electronic gas. One before that delivers a seriously high pitched oscillator whine that sears its way through juicy distortion below  bathed in gobs of warm reverb.Picture  the explosive whine following Jimi Hendrix’s line “ there ain’t no life nowhere!” expanded, intensified and amplified for four sides of sonic mayhem.

This is what the Grateful Dead might have had going on in their heads while their fingers spoke with a stretchy, mellowed out, countrified version. It is as close to what an acid trip feels like as music gets, but I’m not sure I’d want to hear it while tripping!

The recording is very good in a bathed-in-a-whole-lotta-reverb way. When some of the analog synth doodles dart up and down the frequency range there’s a panning effect that slides the movement side to side and three dimensionally through your head and to a space behind where you're sitting.

This record, sent to me along with some others I hope to cover soon, came in the mail with no paper work or press contact or anything. So I can't tell you how to find it to buy the vinyl. I see the CDs are on Amazon.com. Contact: Prophase Music, PO Box 7321 Audubon, PA 19407/www.prophasemusic.com

I think a useful side effect of playing it is that it is probably also a fantastic cartridge demagnetizer.