Posts Tagged ‘Japan’

KIKAGAKU MOYO – ” Forest of Lost Children “

Posted: March 4, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

To anyone who has heard the music of Kikagaku Moyo, it should come as no surprise that the band’s origins lie in hours upon hours of late-night jamming, illuminated by nothing more than the geometric patterns playing behind the band’s eyelids, resulting in a natural, free-floating sound, as of-the-earth as it is intergalactic. It may be surprising that the band sharpened their improvisational skills by busking on the streets of their native Tokyo. It may be surprising that the band’s overall sound may owe as much or more to the Incredible String Band as it does to Acid Mother’s Temple.

But what’s perhaps most surprising about Forest of Lost Children, the band’s face-melting, recorded-ritual sophomore album, is how utterly centered and mature the band sounds, especially given their relatively short lifespan as a band. Boundless though they may be, Kikagaku Moyo here sound anything but lost, their child-like wonder manifested in a confident, courageous exploration of sound. Labels – psychedelic, folk, prog-rock, psychedelic-folk-mixed-with-prog-rock – do little to accurately reflect the spectrum of influences on display, let alone the more impactful realization of completeness in Kikagaku Moyo’s songs.

Easily one of the most shimmering crown-jewels in the rapidly expanding BBiB catalog, look for Kikagaku Moyo and Forest of Lost Children to be found taking shape in the expanded minds of listeners everywhere.

http://

Just in time for Kikagaku Moyo’s 2017 US and EU tours in May and June respectively, we’ve got a beautiful fresh pressing in the works with a brand-new Bone & Black A-side/B-side “swirl” variant. And the cover art for this fourth pressing of FoLC will be printed on heavy duty reverse-board jackets. The band will have a few of these on tour, but likely to sell out.

These will ship May 2017.

KIKAGAKU MOYO – ” House in the Tall Grass “

Posted: December 16, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

Image result

House in the Tall Grass by Japanese psych-folk outfit Kikagaku Moyo could be seen as initially disappointing, for this release reins in the band’s experimental and challenging tendencies, replacing it with what could, at face value be perceived as a more straightforward down-the-middle psych rock album.

Yet, like all the best records, it’s slow to reveal its charms. It teases us before unveiling its delicate and fragile beauty that is as enchanting as it is beguiling. With heavy use of sitars – albeit in a subtle, non-clichéd manner – this is a record that is preoccupied with the gentle, exploring the edges of human emotions through delicate slow-building tracks that grow and envelope almost imperceptibly. Laced with an eloquent sadness and wistful longing, it revels in a lush quiet undercharged beauty that reminds that slow and suggestive can be as overwhelming as loud and heavy.

http://

Kikagaku Moyo will not disappoint you. With this new release, the band continues offering to their followers their trademark psychedelic sound. If you don’t know them, now it’s the time to rectify that mistake.

RORY GALLAGHER – ” Tokyo, Japan ” November 3rd 1977 (Full Concert)

Posted: December 4, 2015 in MUSIC
Tags: , , , ,
0

As an aside, between October 25 and November 5, 1977, Rory and his band played seven gigs in Japan in venues at Nagoya, Hiroshima, Tokyo, and Osaka. Shortly after the band’s final concert at the Nakano Sun-Plaza Hall in Tokyo on November 5, 1977, the band flew to LA to record a new album which remained unreleased until 2011. The album was eventually called Notes From San Francisco. The 1977 Japan gigs were to promote the Calling Card album, which was released in 1976.

Band Lineup:
Rory Gallagher: Guitar, Vocals
Gerry McAvoy: Bass
Rod de’Ath: Drums
Lou Martin: Keyboards

コレクターズCD <b>Rory</b> <b>Gallagher</b>（ロリー・ギャラガー）77 ...

Disc 1
Track 1. Introduction/Monitor Check
Track 2. Moonchild
Track 3. Bought And Sold
Track 4. Band Introduction
Track 5. Tattoo’d Lady
Track 6. Calling Card
Track 7. Secret Agent
Track 8. A Million Miles Away
Track 9. Do You Read Me
Track 10. Out On The Western Plain
Track 11. Too Much Alcohol
Track 12. Barley And Grope Rag (Pistol Slapper Blues)
Track 13. Going To My Hometown

Disc 2
Track 1. I Take What I Want
Track 2. Walk On Hot Coals
Track 3. Garbage Man
Track 4. Souped Up Ford
Track 5. Bullfrog Blues
Track 6. Bass Solo
Track 7. Drum Solo
Track 8. Bullfrog Blues
Track 9. UDO’s Announcement
Track 10. Country Mile
Track 11. Boogie
Track 12. Announcement

 

SUNDAYS and CYBELE – ” Empty Seas “

Posted: July 11, 2015 in MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

http://

Describing music of great power and great expanse as “cinematic” can be fitting, if perhaps overused. When it comes to the music of Tokyo’s Sundays and Cybele, it’s incredibly appropriate.

“Sundays and Cybele” is the title of a 1962 French film directed by Serge Bourguignon, and the winner of an Oscar that year for “Best Foreign Language Film.” Conversely, “Heaven” is the title of the 2015 album from Sundays and Cybele, a Japanese band speaking the universal language of explosive, kaleidoscopic sound, for a result easily translated as both heavy and heavenly.

“Heaven” announces its intentions immediately; opening track “Black Rainbows” takes to the skies in an initially unhinged manner, sounding as much like an ending as a beginning, before a gate-crashing bass line drops us firmly into the overdriven world of Sundays and Cybele. If you’ve ever yearned to hear an Orange amp threaten to explode in a transcendent array of colors, “Heaven” is the album for you. “Almost Heaven” follows, providing evidence that Sundays and Cybele seem always to be reaching for peak experience, here demonstrated by a lead guitar break that seems to merge the differences between Ash Ra Tempel and The Dead Boys into a single, illuminating whole.

Since 2004, Sundays and Cybele has functioned as essentially the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Kazuo Tsubouchi. On “Heaven,” Tsubouchi’s reach seems to aim even higher than ever before. At just over eight minutes, “Night Predator” is the longest song on the album, one that begins with a jaunty, upbeat melody that would seem to slightly betray the song’s title. Yet there’s something in the brittle, bruised stabs of guitar that punctuate the song that makes it clear the intent here is to draw blood – or at least bare its teeth. The same could be said of following track “Empty Seas” or, indeed, of the full album “Heaven” in and of itself. Sundays and Cybele possess a preternatural ability to infuse the straightforward with a strong shot of weirdness, which in turn allows their weirder moments to feel incredibly straightforward and easily translated.

“Hinagiku” and “Time Mirror” end the album on what, out of context, could easily be heard as a melancholy note. Given the extraordinary fuzz pedal abuse of the album’s previous twenty-six minutes, however, these two songs sound like Sundays and Cybele having reached their unreachable goal of “Heaven,” before floating away on another boundless, burning excursion. Heaven only knows where they’ll take us next. Thanks to Ryan Revolt of the Apes.

 

 

 

Newer Entries