It's all Japanese Psych anyway
| This text was taken with courtesy from My Favourite Magazine, published by the Belgian label Sloow Tapes |
words by rû
What can or should I write about Japanese psych that hasn’t already been written.
Should I list the gurus of the genre:
Takehisa kosugi
Keiji Haino
Asahito nanjo
Makoto Kawabata
Masaki batoh
Turo kudo
Or should I list the groups and collectives they were, are part of:
Les Rallizes Denudes (Hadaka no rallizes)
Taj Mahal travelers
Lost Aarraaff
Fushitsusha
High rise
Mainliner
Musica transonica
Acid mother temple and the melting paraio u.f.o.
Ghost (earlier: eikyu konran)
Maher shalal hash baz
Perhaps I could write about how the groups and leaders mingle to form other groups. How they move from free rock space jams to acoustic folk to dark blues to noise to minimalist compositions without hesitation (often even within one track).
Maybe I could write about the sheer delightful covers; the acid seventies nudity on acid mothers temple covers, the beautiful blackness of Haino covers, the kaleidoscopic designs of Masaki Batoh, the superb screened designs of siwarecords.
Or I could write a brief history of psych in Japan; the proto-japanese-psych groups were bands like golden cups, the mops, the jacks with their head firmly into western psychedelica like Blue Cheer, Pink Floyd.
The jacks were the first to transgress into theatre and adopt a more art-like approach to their music. Theatrical collaborations continue to this day in Japanese psych. The first bands that would bridge between psychedelic rock, free improv and noise however were Les Rallizes Denudes and Taj Mahal Travelers. Though Takehisa Kosugi, co-founder of Taj Mahal Travelers, vehemently denied playing psych, his vantage points were free improv, fluxus, …
(as an aside; one of the first free improv bands was the fluxus inspired group Ongaku with the great Yasunao Tone)
Les Rallizes denudes are a band shrouded in mystery, their life performances are rumored to have been very extreme, the politics of some of its members even more.
Original member Wakabayashi allegedly was involved in a hijacking of an airplane by members of the Japanese Red Army (Sekigun).
Around those days the influence of free jazz and improv on Japanese psych grew; music by Albert Ayler, Kaoru Abe, Masayuki Takayanagi, … inspired Keiji Haino and his seminal group Lost Aarraaff. He went beyond the limitations of those genres and beyond the limitations of any genre by creating his own, a continuing voyage into the realm of ‘ma’ – the space and dynamics between the notes and sounds -, when he formed the ultimate dark shamanistic band Fushitsusha.
In his solo projects the percussions and string plucking I hear shimmerings of traditional koto playing, early delta blues and Shinto percussions; all musical traditions with the same concern about ‘ma’.
Fushitsusha and Asahito Nanjo’s High Rise were also at the birth of the major label in Japanese psych Hideo Ikeezumi’s PSF (psychedelic speed freaks, a name taken from a former band of Asahito Nanjo).
High Rise is Nanjo’s free improv rock band, a full throttle full volume onslaught. No wonder if you find his prime influences were in the punk/no wave scene with bands like DNA, Mars, Teenage Jezus and the jerks and local bands like Friction and even proto punk bands like The godz and the fugs.
The differences in approach between the free non-composed rock of High Rise, the composition on the fly with Musica Transonica and the more song based approach with Mainliner which includes AMT member Makoto Kawabata, are sometimes hard to discern probably due to the domination of Nanjo himself.
Another project worked on by Nanjo and Kawabata is the contemporary Kagura-metaphysics album on Fractal Records; where Nanjo conducts the La Musica Orchestra, an effort of true Zappa-esque proportions.
The acid approach to psych hasn’t disappeared though; the Acid Mothers Temple soul collective has more groups and members to fill a acid rock festival bill. The influence of American drone minimalists (La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Tony Conrad) is self evident, yet the power of the acid space jams often make you forget how in tune they are with the avant-garde.
AMT front figure Makoto Kawabata is very prolific as a solo artist as well as a collaborator. The blood brothers trio Tsurubami deserves special mention; it goes back to pre-AMT days, with Emi Nobuko on drums and AMT keyboard player Higashi Hiroshi, Makoto Kawabata dives into the deepest spiritual pools driving this power unit into extensive psych power workouts bustling between silences and total chaos.
Fittingly the existence of the groups itself seems prone to these lapses as well. Key members of the collective (Cotton casino, Higashi Hiroshi …) seem equally prolific and eclectic as their front man.
Ghost similarly delve into the acid fountain while remaining a bit more reticent and mystical than AMT. One of the earlier bands of Batoh and Ghost memebers giant was ‘Gareki no Toshi’ the city af fallen trees, and even now the fascination with ruins and decay and the new growing out of the cold is apparent when they play their folk drones in old temples and let the surroundings influence their musical spirits.
Maher Shalal Hash Baz are a bit bizarre in the psych context, but you can hear the seventies influences clearly enough. MSHB was formed in the early eighties by Turo and Reiko Kudo with Hiro Nakazaki after a period of political support for the a-musik collective and the subsequent political disillusionment after several members of the collective were arrested for an attempt on the emperor’s life. Their ramshackle amateuristic approach to playing songs is sometimes a bit on the sweet and mellow side. In this onslaught of power sounds however they do hold their own by some brilliant and quiet songs of a naïf and out worldly beauty. While lyrically they build a lot on biblical texts and quotes, the kudo’s conversion to Christianity doesn’t preach from the songs.
A strange outsider in this part of psych also worth mentioning is Hiroyuki Usu or L whose ‘holy letters’ is a sheer stunner of an album.
Maybe I should even talk about new players like Ai Aso and Itakuro Mineko who hold their own in the next wave of heavy noise psych with bands like LSD March and Mininokoto. Even people like free players Masayoshi Urabe and Chie Mukai or the noise exorcisms of Space Machine (Yamazaki Maso) and newcomers Crossbred are linked to the psych movement.
Or perhaps I could tell you how the instigators of the Onkyo improv scene, Tetuzi Akiyama and Taku Sugimoto appeared on the PSF sample Tokyo Flashback 4 with a scorching hound dog blues, that had all the elements of Tetuzi Akiyama’s boogie records as well as of Sugimoto’s later deconstructions. The Onkyo scene could even be construed as a countermovement to all the noise and psych that was going on.
Probably I should just talk about why I got into psych in the first place, sadly I don’t have an answer to give you there …
Or it should be all the above in a great big whirl of feedback and reverberating vocals.
Recommended listening:
v.a. – amaterasu (fractal)
v.a. – Tokyo Flashback 1 to 5 (PSF)
Les Rallizes denudes – Live ’77 (2 cd bootleg)
Acid Mother Temple & the melting paraiso u.f.o. – Absolutely freak out ‘Zap your mind’
Makoto Kawabata – Inui 3 (VHF)
Ghost – Snuffbox immanence (Dragcity)
L – Holy Letters (VHF)
Keiji Haino - everything
Fushitsusha – everything
Maher Shala Baz – An Egypt to another Egypt (Domino)
Aso Ai – Lavender edition (Pedal)
Aso Ai – Umeromono Izen (Tiliqua)
Crossbred - We don’t need a pain (chocolate monk)
And any Siwa or Tiliqua you can lay your hands on.