New Miminokoto – All About Mimi

Following a lineup change, Miminokoto released a superb live CDR last year, which had me looking forward to a new official album — and here it is, albeit under the name New Miminokoto, apparently to distinguish itself from the earlier incarnation.

The main change is guitarist and vocalist Junzo Suzuki, who has been mentioned on this blog before. His style isn’t radically different from previous guitarist Masami Kawaguchi, who’s busy now with his own New Rock Syndicate, but Suzuki’s feel seems even better suited for the dark, bluesy psychedelia of Miminokoto. His voice is passionate, and his guitar work moves fluidly from slow, delicate strumming into fierce fuzz-driven leads. Drummer Koji Shimura, the group leader, is joined by bassist-around-town Takuya Nishimura, whose bass alternates between steady, solid rhythm work and busier melodic playing.

Miminokoto has never made a secret of its inspiration from Kousokuya’s main man Kaneko Jutok, and here tribute is paid with two of Kaneko’s songs. The first, “Hour of Death,” might be my favorite piece on the album. A few years ago I was scheduled to play a show in Tokyo on a bill with Kaneko, but he shockingly passed away a month or so before the show. Instead, I was fortunate to see Shimura join a tribute to Kaneko with singer Mick and, if I recall correctly, Nishimura on bass.

Released by the stalwart PSF label, this is a must for anyone who’s enjoyed the previous Miminokoto outings as well as any of the other bands mentioned here. The band also have a great live album which they’re shopping around here in the U.S. (anyone with a label who’s interested, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with them!). Hopefully they’ll get that released and come tour soon.

Listen to “Hour of Death” by New Miminokoto.

Majutsu no Niwa – At the End of Summer

Those who were disappointed to hear about the dissolution of the great Overhang Party will be happy to see that leader Rinji Fukuoka is back. His new trio, Majutsu no Niwa (Magical Garden), is almost like Overhang Party part 2, with perhaps a slightly calmer feel but much the same dark psych style. Together with bassist Hiroyuki Kageyama and drummer Shigeki Morohashi, Fukuoka lays down eight long tracks on At the End of Summer, passing through gently strummed songs as well as moments of heavy fuzz overload.

The opening “Majutsu no Niwa” is one of the hardest rockers here, and given the title might be the band’s theme song. The 13-minute “Beyond the Steel Rails” covers it all, with the first few minutes in calm ballad mode before they kick into churning rock gear and Fukuoka offers searing leads over a suddenly very heavy rhythm section. The tracks were all recorded live (at Mission’s, Earthdom, and Silver Elephant) in the fall of 2008, but the sound quality is very high. It’s got the airy live feel you might expect, but everything is clear and present.

Released by There. Also check out the band’s website for more info.

Listen to “Whither” by Majutsu no Niwa.

Kakuni “Onsen no Kedarusa”

From Sapporo, Kakuni are a two-piece, guitarist Aoi Maeda and drummer Yumi Ozaki, with both women singing. With jangly guitar and sparse, simple drums, and girlish chanted vocals, these songs aren’t too far from late Sekiri, though with more emphasis on a low-fi art-pop aesthetic rather than Sekiri’s punk rock roots. The name Kakuni comes from a pork belly dish, of all things.

They don’t drag things out — most of the songs are just a couple of minutes long, and all ten fly by in just over half an hour on this self-released CDR. There’s some fun stuff, with bits like the silly reverbed vocal gymnastics on “Asonde” and tongue-in-cheek musical motifs tossed in here and there. It’s pretty charming stuff that mixes garage rock with some avant leanings and goofiness that keeps things on the entertaining side.

Find out more on the band’s website here.

Listen to “Asonde” by Kakuni.

The Guilty C. and Tabata Mitsuru

Following the previous collaboration between these two, one might expect this to be a CD filled with pretty heavy noise. Not so, however. Instead, this is more like Cluster and Harmonia passed through a modern filter with, sure, a few dollops of noise here and there. But for most part the pairing here produce spaced-out sounds with twists of audio surrealism.

Tabata is likely familiar to most readers of this blog, from his earliest work with Noizunzuri and the Boredoms through Leningrad Blues Machine and Amazon Saliva to high-profile albums and touring with Zeni Geva and, more recently, Acid Mothers Temple. Guilty Connector is one of the newer breed of heavy noise artists, with a good collection of intense recordings on his discography.

On this collaboration, the album moves from opener “Shamrashamra” with its krautrock-ish guitar rhythm and zoomish synths through the dark ambience of “Trance Oscillation From Limbo” and the videogame synth bloops of “Bayti”. Then it’s on to blippy electronic percolations and buzzes over Tangerine Dreamish floating synth on “Soleca Nokto”, roiling synthesizers like burbling water on “Maquina de Fantasma”, the pretty textured ambience of “Patris”, and the concluding “Acta Est Fabula, Plaudite!” with slow rhythmic pulses and buzzing synth.

This pairing’s produced an unexpected angle, and a very welcome one for any folks looking for some great old-style electronic music, updated in fine style. Good work. Visit the label’s web site for more information here.

Listen to “Soleca Nokto” by The Guilty C. and Tabata Mitsuru.

The Beautiful Poetic

This a very well put-together CDR, from the nice sleeve and artwork with included sticker and insert to the music: three pieces of primarily instrumental rock somewhat akin to Sonic Youth, Mono, and the like. Intricate twin guitars and strong rhythms are helped by very clear recordings. No titles are given, but when I put the CDR into my computer, CDDB did pull up information, calling this “Demo 07″ and providing song titles. So I’ll use those here.

The first piece (”Below Zero”) is a sweeping, romantic yet fast-moving song dominated by guitars while the second song (”Mid Night Romance”) integrates piano with quick drum rolls and chiming guitar lines. It develops into a pretty heavy thing with thick guitar chords pounding away in sync with the drums and piano — very nice. The final song (”Space Mate”) finds a middle ground between the other two, moving from fast, heavy drums to quieter passages of crisp, melodic guitar lines and back. The band’s quite tight, and they move together into each change, and overall this is well-done work. I wouldn’t mind a little more potent energy — they seem to be almost too in-control, as if they’re holding back a bit.

For this CDR, the band was five people, but on their web site it looks as though the core trio is guitarist Kousuke Iwasaki, bassist Yoshihiko Kato, and drummer Shinji Yamada. Second guitar and singer Megumi Kishikawa, and keyboard player/singer Sayaka Yagyu, were perhaps just involved in the recording of these three songs. The band appear to be from Okayama, south of the Kansai area.

Check out more on The Beautiful Poetic at their web site here and on MySpace here.

Listen to “Mid Night Romance” by The Beautiful Poetic.

Part Animal Machine

Another cassette that I picked up years back. This one might well have been from scouring the teetering stacks of cassettes in the corner of Modern Music. Thanks to recommendations from Ikeezumi-san, I got a lot of interesting stuff from there, including some (like Kadura and Onna-Kodomo) that led to releases on Charnel Music. However, noting that the label’s from Osaka, it’s equally likely that I acquired this at Time Bomb or someplace out there.

In any case, Part Animal Machine is a bit of an unknown, like so many of the cassettes that I’m digging up and posting about here. It’s three long tracks, recorded on 1997.08.31. There are four members listed including two drummers, though it’s unclear whether both drummers play on all three tracks or if the duties are split. Guitarist Doi-A is the most present of the quartet, with bassist Masa Bando and drummers Shin Nakamura and Sakiyama Kazu along for the ride. The title of track three on side B, “Machine Gun,” gives some indication of the style here, actually — freeform jamming with a fast-paced heavy approach, with perhaps a bit of excessive high-speed technique from Doi-A. It’s pretty good stuff though, even with the rough recording quality.

It’s unclear whether the title of the cassette is “Under the Sun” because that’s actually the label name, if I’m parsing the cover correctly. Looks to me like this is release 001 from Under The Sun, and the label’s run by bassist Bando. Either Under the Sun is also the name of the tape or it’s self-titled, take your pick. I’ve excerpted a segment from track two, “Part Machine”: Listen here.

Kumoma Jam Vol. 3

I forget where I picked up this cassette, as it was some time ago. Probably at Disc Union in Shinjuku, but who knows. It’s an interesting one, but certainly of its time, from when turntablism was just beginning to be the big thing in Japan’s indie scene. This was presumably the third cassette from Kumoma, given the title, and it does indeed sound like a somewhat free-form jam recorded and then put onto tape for release. Kumoma were just Synske on turntable, and Takuya on mix and effects. The tape’s quality certainly varies, from pretty tried-and-true jazzy beats to more interesting moments of atmospherics and occasional entertaining vocal samples thrown in. It’s not all great stuff, but it has its moments. I’ve never come across another mention of Kumoma, and after all this time it’s unlikely that the email address on the tape is still good…

I’ve excerpted a portion from side A which covers a bit of everything from beats to ambience: Listen here.

Fumio Kosakai “The Warm Garden”

Best known for his participation in the Incapacitants with partner T. Mikawa, Kosakai has been a presence in the noise and experimental underground scene in Tokyo for many years. He’s also been one of the crazy guys in Bustmonsters, a member of C.C.C.C., appeared live with Hijokaidan, and much more. Some of his fascinating work is on the more drone-experimental side of things than noise, including the great Gu-N CD (with fellow C.C.C.C. member Nagakubo and the profilic Ikuro Takahashi among others) and superb …Of Dogstarman CD (also with Takahashi). This cassette is one of his earliest works, released in 1992 or 1993 (depending on where you look) on the Anciant Records (sic) label. I’m pretty sure Anciant is Kosakai’s own label, but I’ve never asked about that. This was release #2 from the label, the first being his Earth Calling cassette from several years earlier.

Using electronics, Casio-tone, metals and violin, this is a magnificent drone, not far afield from some of Organum’s work, but with a different dark atmosphere. Two side-long works, the title piece is a bit calmer while “Violin Traveler” gets somewhat more edgy, I suppose. Both are excellent night-time listens. I’m posting an excerpt here from “Violin Traveler”: Listen here.

Psychedelic Crazy Horse cassette

I picked up this tape at Modern Music many years ago, and as part of my ongoing cassette->mp3 conversion effort I got it transferred the other day. This is pretty wacky stuff, sort of mutant psych-jazz-jams. Not a lot of information included beyond the song titles and the lineup: Ishii Yoji (guitar and alto sax), Takahata Shingo (1 string-slide bass), and Gulliber Non (drums). Not sure what’s up with Non’s name, which must be an alias, or Shingo’s 1-string bass, but if that’s true he does a pretty solid job of making do with a single string. Yoji’s guitar is the main focus here, with weirdly sloppy yet always in-place distorted riffage. There’s some sort of jazzy influence going on with song titles like “Ronnald Shannon Jackson” (sic) and “Inharmonic Boogie is Harmolodic”. The band has tracks on some installment’s of PSF’s Tokyo Flashback series of compilations so they appear to have still been active at least a few years ago; I haven’t heard anything about them more recently than that, however.

Here’s a track from side A of the tape: Listen to “Arena for Miles”.

Quick Dick Soup Show-ten Ryokou

The hilariously-named Quick Dick Soup aren’t quite what one might expect. I got a CDR from them in the mail quite a long time ago, and figured it would be by-the-book hardcore; an impression based purely on the name, the song titles, and the photo of the band. But this Osaka band actually put together a pretty unique blend of punk, prog, and generally imaginative heavy rock. The opener “Powder” includes some pretty trippy time changes and smoothly-flowing guitar work. Singer 884n (yeah, that’s really what he calls himself) sings in his own language, a twisty sequence of sounds that goes in and around the song rhythms very nicely. As their promo sheet says, “It’s not any country’s language, only his language. When he sings, it looks like a possessed prayer by Asian gods.”

The album goes by in a bit over half an hour, going through a really enjoyable series of songs that sometimes remind me of DemiSemiQuaver, but with more of a hardcore origin. Then they’ll go into a vaguely funk break, but with heavy power chords, then the guitar will get spacey, and then something else. If you’re into eclectic, well-played heavy stuff, definitely check them out.

The band came together in 1996, and went through a lot of lineup changes over the years. This album was recorded in 2001, and from what I can tell that was about it for the band, though it’s a little hard to tell. The last live show I came across was in 2003. If anyone knows more, let us know in the comments.

There’s a web site still up that provides mp3s of the whole album, so instead of putting an mp3 here I’ll just link to the site: go here.