- Optimum Gulps
- Oct 6, 2003
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You wanna save this place, right? And I want to destroy it. Brick by hypocritical brick.
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These tracks are from the first collaborative album between singer Salyu and experimental music producer Cornelius. It's interesting and often extremely beautiful. I've been going back to this every once in a while for years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSLK9CCzTo8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DChoNWcIbLw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brec06BA6JU (really impressive live performance of the album's opening track)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65r830HQFRg
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Dec 11, 2015 17:39
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Apr 29, 2024 08:48
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- Optimum Gulps
- Oct 6, 2003
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You wanna save this place, right? And I want to destroy it. Brick by hypocritical brick.
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Alright, so, Japanese prog. I'd try to write up a brief history of the scene but I sadly don't have much in the way of sources...
I can split the J-prog scene into roughly 3 groups, though. The first scene was the initial wave of psych and folk-inspired bands like Yonin Bayashi, Far East Family Band, Magical Power Mako, Flied Egg, and solo artists like Kimio Mizutani and Hiro Yanagida. It's sort of hard to sum up this particular scene since the artists brought a really eclectic blend of influences to the table, but probably the wildest and most summative record of the period is Magical Power Mako's debut. (If the vocals on that track sound a little familiar, by the way, that's because it's Keiji loving Haino.) A few cool archival releases fall into this category too - my personal favorites are Round House, who remind me of KC in a similar sense that Bi Kyo Ran do, and Mandrake, the nearly unknown first band of pop impresario Susumu Hirasawa. If you like Hirasawa's work on the Paprika or Berserk soundtracks, Mandrake is... pretty different but still worth your time if only as a curiosity. The audio quality of these archival releases tends to be pretty poor but that comes with the territory I guess.
The second scene, rather than being inspired by Hawkwind and Faust and other improv-focused bands, was keyboard-focused and generally worshipped at the altar of Emerson Lake and Palmer (though some artists, like Mr. Sirius and Kenso, were not quite so intense and technical, and took more from Soft Machine or Camel). The general tendency with these bands is towards very brassy, digital synth tones, lots of neoclassicism and aggressive rhythmic changes. This is where I'll stick artists like Social Tension, Providence, Gerard, Vienna, Vermilion Sands and Outer Limits (probably the best known group in this style). While this scene is pretty obscure abroad, it was a big influence on Japanese metal (as I mentioned with Marge Litch) and video game soundtracks. Motoi Sakuraba got his start as a prog keyboardist, and I suspect that composers like Noriyuki Iwadare, Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu were strongly inspired by the strain of highly symphonic ELP-inspired prog popular in Japan at the time.
The third group of artists is the more avant-minded ones inspired by Magma and/or chamber prog like Henry Cow. Probably the most important overall band (though calling them prog is pretty reductive) is the bass/drums duo Ruins, whose debut mixed noise rock, zeuhl and math rock into one unholy cacophony - and along the way introduced listeners to one of the world's best drummers, Tatsuya Yoshida. Seriously, dude is a madman. His characteristic jabbering vocals can be found in other projects like Koenjihyakkei. Speaking of which... Angherr Shisspa is seriously one of the most fun and catchy albums out there, regardless of genre label. Anyways, Ruins hardly created the avant-prog scene in the country, and a lot of their contemporaries like Bondage Fruit, Happy Family, Mong Hang, and Demi Semi Quaver deserve a lot more attention in my opinion. As with a lot of Japanese music, these bands don't pay much attention to genre convention and often include noise rock or punk influences which you rarely find in prog. More pop-based oddities like After Dinner also belong here.
Seeing Kenso and Koenjihyakkei live in 2005 and 2007 respectively (also Magma in 2003 and 2008, but they're not Japanese) was a highlight of my music-experiencing life. At the time, I was already a big Koenjihyakkei fan but hadn't heard any of Kenso's output except for Ken-Son-Gu-Su, their live album from a few years prior, which was superb. What a fantastic festival NEARfest was while it lasted. RIP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7vyTla4fhQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIJtICRAxPc
Neither clip is from NEARfest but fine examples of what they're like live nonetheless.
There's also another excellent pair of Japanese prog bands fronted by violinist Akihisa Tsuboy - KBB (saw them live in 2005, also at NEARfest) and Pochakaite Malko (haven't seen them).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdpWVGm6lU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuz5xI3WnFk
I'll have to check out Mong Hang and Demi Semi Quaver...haven't even heard of either of them before.
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Jan 15, 2016 06:06
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- Optimum Gulps
- Oct 6, 2003
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You wanna save this place, right? And I want to destroy it. Brick by hypocritical brick.
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What Japanese artists have you folks seen live?
Pretty much all the bands I've seen are prog.
KBB
Koenjihyakkei
Kenso
Naikaku
Ain Soph
Qui
Ars Nova
All excellent - the first three were at NEARfest and the last four were at ProgDay over the years.
I've had opportunities to see Boris, Acid Mothers Temple, and Melt-Banana, but ended up missing out due to other things coming up. Pretty bummed out about that, particularly with Boris, but they come around here often enough (Raleigh area) that I should be able to see them eventually.
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Jan 23, 2016 03:31
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- Optimum Gulps
- Oct 6, 2003
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You wanna save this place, right? And I want to destroy it. Brick by hypocritical brick.
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You guys tease me with mention of J-Thrash, and then no links?
Terror Squad are the only Japanese thrash band I'm aware of (though of course there are others), and they're pretty solid. This is from 2006, but they've been around since '92.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-MBK2Y4OCA
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Feb 6, 2016 21:25
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Dec 11, 2015 17:39
