Posted in Whathaveyou on December 13th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Something you might not get to see every day here in heavy psych rockers Blasting Rod making the voyage from their home in Nagoya, Japan, to play their first show on North American soil this coming Jan. 6. The gig is set for the Redwood Bar & Grill, and the band will be joined by Vie Jester and Power Falcon on what’s sure to be a lifetime memory for Blasting Rod.
Understand, this isn’t a tour. They’re crossing the Pacific Ocean to play a show in the US and proffer their weirdo lysergic experimentalism in a context entirely new. Will they ever come back? Who knows. But if you’re in Los Angeles or someplace adjacent, this is one to consider if you like being part of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. The ostensible occasion is the anniversary of their 2022 album, Of Wild Hazel (review here), but come on. This one is its own excuse for being.
Get there if you can get there. And it’s $10 at the door!
To wit:
Break those New Year’s resolutions Saturday, Jan. 6 at Redwood Bar & Grill in downtown Los Angeles when Blasting Rod makes its one and (so far) only North American live appearance.
In Fuzz We Trust presents Blasting Rod, Vie Jester, and Power Falcon.
Escape to L.A. with Blasting Rod at Redwood Bar & Grill on January 6 for the 1st anniversary of the North American LP release, Of Wild Hazel.
8pm Showtime $10 Cover at the door https://theredwoodbar.com 316 W. 2nd St. Los Angeles CA (213) 680-2600 Open 11am – 2am
Ain’t nuthin’ but a party, y’all!
Come hang with Blasting Rod at a chill bar with food and seating.
Blasting Rod is a get weird—stay weird tight but loose 3-piece based in Nagoya, Japan playing fuzzy grooves and slippery psychedelia.
Las ranuras borrosas y la psicodelia resbaladiza te transportarán a unas vacaciones para desconectarte de todo por un tiempo.
Posted in Reviews on September 12th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Some context required. The common thread between Tomoyuki Trio and Modoki, who are also a trio but apparently didn’t want to advertise, is guitarist Mike Vest and drummer Dave Sneddon. Based in the UK, Vest also mixes here and might be recognized from any number of mostly experimentalist doom-drone and cosmic projects/collaborations, including BONG, Blown Out, Artifacts and Uranium, Drunk in Hell, Ozo, 11Paranoias, etc. (an offering from his Kaliyuga Express project was just announced for October), while Sneddon, in addition to running Flat Earth Records, has played in various punk bands going back to the early 1980s, including Blood Robots, Generic, Boxed In, and the Vest-inclusive collab Mienakunaru for their first two albums.
The go-anywhere lysergic off-the-cuffism of Mienakunaru is a decent place to start understanding Tomoyuki Trio‘s five-song/39-minute debut, Mars and Modoki‘s concurrently-issued eight-song/36-minute second album, Luna to Phobos, but Vest and Sneddon are not the only common elements. Both are released through Riot Season Records (on the same day, no less), both were mastered by John McBain, and both are remote collaborations with Japanese psych guitarists, Modoki featuring Mitsuru Tabata (Zeni Geva and Acid Mothers Temple, among others), and Tomoyuki Trio taking its name from Up-Tight guitarist Tomoyuki Aoki, who also contributes the only vocals to Mars on 15-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Voiceless Cry” and who in the gamma-radiation guitar howl in “Metagalactic” freely demonstrates what happens when you arrive after setting controls for the heart of the sun. You incinerate.
With Vest and Sneddon recording in the UK and Tomoyuki in Japan, Mars was clearly built remotely, but that does nothing to hinder its sense of reach. “Voiceless Cry” even dares some vocals as it oozes and churns through its first half, and the wailing solos on guitar set up the more forward riff of “Transcendentem,” which becomes the bed for another lead as the instrumental procession unfolds. There are hints of space and garage and both come into further bloom on “Metagalactic,” but it’s an unimaginably big infinity out there and even between here and Mars there’s plenty to explore, so Vest, Tomoyuki and Sneddon set themselves to that task. “Universum” slows the movement and (while we’re touring the solar system) is like an ice volcano on the moon Enceladus in its somehow molten, definitely frozen lurch, or maybe, on Mars, like staring down into the Valles Marineris, or looking up from the foot of Olympus Mons. Large, stark and otherworldly. By its last minute-plus, it is noise, and that feels appropriate.
Mars capper “Aether” seems to pick up from similar noise but it’s not a direct bleed. Still, the feeling of diving back in from whence one just came is palpable, and the 3:26 of “Aether” is a dark trip-out. After about a minute, it happens into a solo section that reminds of Earthless if they were into ’60s jazz instead of ’70s rock, and the wash of noise returns on the other side to give Mars the avant garde finish it deserves. “Aether” is about half again as short as the next shortest track, so it’s an outlier on Mars, but Luna to Phobos, with Sneddon, Vest and Mitsuru Tabata operating as Modoki, is shorter on the per-piece average.
Part of that might be the effect of having an album already to their credit and being more solidified in their approach, but the two records were reportedly made at more or less the same time, and calling anything on Modoki‘s sophomore LP solid seems like a bit of a misnomer, since although Earth’s moon and Phobos — which alongside Deimos is one of Mars’ two natural satellites, probably captured from the asteroid belt however many millions or billions of years ago — are both rocky formations, there’s an awful lot in opener “Sick Starliner,” “Mud River,” “Those Disruptors” and the half-speed-Hawkwindian volume surge of the title-track that feels more like subsurface magma heating, melting and cooling, turning rock to liquid and liquid to rock in a convective exchange that creates new compounds and conglomerates — the stuff of stirring planets. A raw, organic, contained violence.
One that grows broad in “Non Telepaths” amid piercing synth noise, casts early psych in its own image in “Multiplied From the Old Days,” and lumbers through weirdo noisemaking in “Benefit of Control” before the eight-minute closer/longest track “Zenith” takes airy float and lets it (d)evolve into a careening charge marked by rising synthesizer and the kind of gravity that leads to total dug-in-itude and a dizzying dreaminess. They do eventually reach what would seem to be the titular zenith, and just past eight minutes in, they seem to let the song go to end it, having arrived at their mark and seemingly accomplished what they set out to do in getting there. Modoki‘s cuts feel more structured, but that might honestly be because they’re shorter than Tomoyuki Trio‘s, but putting the two albums next to each other reveals fascinating differences of personality between them, highlighting the character at play in the respective performances of Tomoyuki and Mitsuru.
It should probably go without saying that something shared between Luna to Phobos and Mars is their extremity. Whether you’re listening to them both together, each on its own, whatever, Tomoyuki Trio and Modoki are both putting a challenge before the listener and before conventional craft. At the most basic level, yeah, this is rock music — guitar, bass, drums, synth, keys, occasional vocals, etc. — but it’s been deconstructed and repurposed to suit these expansive, on-their-own-wavelength ends. It is not accessible or overly friendly. At moments either of these collections can be downright harsh, but both resonate with intention.
I won’t claim to know how Mars or Luna to Phobos was pieced together, but whatever that process was, the parties involved — that’s Vest/Sneddon and Mitsuru and the same pair and Tomoyuki — have found a means to convey a whole-group dynamic and, more impressively, embarked on developing a chemistry without being in the same room. That Modoki and Tomoyuki Trio both gel as well as they do is a credit to the open nature of the creative impulses launching them.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Church of Misery‘s current lineup — if there is one — is the stuff fire-emoji splurges are made of. I saw them less than a month ago at SonicBlast in Portugal (review here), so no, I’m not just basing that assessment on the record. Though, if I were, the work of Japanese doom rock legend, bassist and auteur Tatsu Mikami in riffcraft there would probably be enough for the statement to stand. The very definition of ‘on fire,’ or perhaps it would be more thematically appropriate to describe them as: killer.
Guitarist Fumiya Hattori, also in Tatsu‘s Sonic Flower side-project and visibly the youngest member of Church of Misery, is a huge part of why. I’ll allow that having Tatsu‘s riffs to work from is for sure a leg-up in that, but the character in his solos and what he brings to the material in his style, sitting right in the pocket on those Sabbath-worship grooves, new and old — that is, not only on Born Under a Mad Sign(review here), which is his first appearance with the band — is not to be understated.
He’s a special player, not the least because he’ll continue to grow. And yeah, Church of Misery run through personnel on the regular — even in in the post making it official with Fumiya, Tatsu notes they’re looking for singers and drummers — so it may or may not be forever, but hopefully his will be a career to follow. A player like that will always find someone in need of their services.
Here’s that post from Tatsu:
Fumiya Hattori (Sonic Flower) has joined Church of Misery as a guitarist.
After Sonic Flower’s new recording and Church of Misery’s two European tours, Fumiya Hattori (Gt.) has become an official member of Church of Misery.
<<< Vocalist, drummer wanted >>>
Vocalist and drummer are active with the cooperation of support members, so we are still looking for vocalists and drummers.
Those who have an understanding of this kind of music and can lead a life centered around a band, including overseas tours. Practice in the city. Cannot be shared with other bands. The drummer is male or female. It doesn’t matter whether you recommend yourself or others.
If you are interested, please contact the Gmail posted on the website.
It’s taken Church of Misery seven years to release Born Under a Mad Sign, their seventh album, and it has seven tracks, so perhaps mad signs abound on the seminal Japanese doom rockers’ latest LP for Rise Above Records. The band, led as ever by bassist Tatsu Mikami — who belongs in the conversation with the likes of Matt Pike and Leif Edling when it comes to Iommic inheritors — will cross the 30-year mark on the back of this 54-minute onslaught, which remains true to their modus of writing songs about serial killers and other cult figures.
In the past it’s been Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos coupled with a Cactus cover — that was 2004’s The Second Coming, by the way — here it’s Fritz Haarmann (as seen on the cover), H.H. Holmes and Haystacks Balboa‘s “Spoiler” being covered, so perhaps over time Tatsu has had to dig a little past the obvious in terms of people to write about and bands to cover, even if the essential formula remains consistent. The same could be said of the riffs, and make no mistake, the riffs are central both on Born Under a Mad Sign and throughout Church of Misery‘s catalog. While there’s plenty of the up-front Black Sabbath sludge boogie for which Church of Misery are so widely and so correctly lauded, Born Under a Mad Sign also stretches out in terms of jams and solos in a way that the band’s most recent album, 2016’s recorded-in-America And Then There Were None (review here) was less interested in doing.
Not particularly surprising since, Tatsu aside, the band is working with a completely different lineup. This too is part of how Church of Misery operate, with members coming and going over a course of decades and serving pretty much at Tatsu‘s say-so until the don’t. This collection brings back vocalist Kazuhiro Asaeda, who sang on Church of Misery‘s 2003 split with Acrimony, the recorded-in-1996-released-in-2007 Vol. 1 (reissue review here), and who featured on the 2022 offering Me and My Bell Bottom Blues (review here) from Tatsu‘s Sonic Flower side-project last year.
Kazuhiro is a big piece of what makes Born Under a Mad Sign work so well. To hear his guttural squeal amid the roll of closer “Butcher Baker (Robert Hansen),” like if Satan decided to stop teaching guitar and just play and sing the blues himself, or his rasps from under the lumbering tonal chaos of centerpiece “Murder Castle Blues (H.H. Holmes),” he is as organic a fit in terms of personality as Tatsu‘s lyrics have ever had, and in listening, I find I’m perfectly happy to not know the words save for picking up a few things here and there, as on the opener “Beltway Sniper (John Allen Muhammad),” which in addition to being one of the album’s upper-tier ass-kickers is interesting for crossing a line between someone who’s a serial killer and a mass murder. The difference, as I understand it, is serial killers go one at a time. Does this mean Church of Misery would write songs about mass shooters? And what response would they get to, say, a song about Columbine, or Sandy Hook, or Uvalde? Is that a line they would cross? Is there a line they wouldn’t?
One’s own sensibilities and interests will invariably inform opinions on what’s discussed and how throughout this or any other Church of Misery work, and it seems silly to feign moral pearl-clutching for something they’ve been doing almost since their start, but the chance the band take in exploring more modern murder in its various forms, particularly at the level they’re doing it, is that someone from outside the underground in which they reside will notice and call them out on the generally horrific nature of their themes. I’m not saying that will happen with Born Under a Mad Sign, though it could since people are still alive who remember David Koresh or the Beltway Sniper, but Church of Misery have trod this ground before and gotten away with it so there’s nothing to say they can’t again. All I’m saying is with riffs this good, they run the risk of being heard.
Even more endemic to the personality of the record is the guitar work of Yukito Okazaki, whose bluesy pulls in the second-half solo of “Beltway Sniper (John Allen Muhammad)” and the density of the subsequent chug set a high standard that the songs that follow thankfully meet. With Toshiaki Umemura on drums, a(nother) new incarnation of Church of Misery is complete, and they sound extra vicious in so much of Born Under a Mad Sign, whether it’s the make-a-nasty-face nod of “Most Evil (Fritz Haarmann)” or the wah-complemented shove and shout of “Freeway Madness Boogie (Randy Kraft),” the groove loose and the danger of coming apart high as the band nonetheless hold it together as of course they would.
“Most Evil (Fritz Haarmann)” tops 10 minutes and “Freeway Madness Boogie (Randy Kraft)” is one of the shorter cuts on the 2LP at 6:16 — the shortest is “Spoiler,” the aforementioned Haystacks Balboa cover — but both are unabashed riff-fests, and the same holds true throughout. Church of Misery know who they are, what they want to be, and how they want to sound, and Tatsu, as the perceived auteur of that, could fairly be called a visionary. Listening through the swelling roll in the verse of “Murder Castle Blues (H.H. Holmes),” or the way in which “Come and Get Me Sucker (David Koresh)” picks up from the sample of its titular cult leader opining to this or that news organization about Americans arming themselves as a political position to unveil the full threat of its bassline and riff before the blowout verse actually takes hold ahead of the made-for-the-stage shout-along chorus delivering the title line, Tatsu‘s vision comes through clearly.
This is the underlying message of Born Under a Mad Sign, and of Church of Misery circa 2023 more broadly — that the group in whatever form it takes is beholden to Tatsu‘s will, and steered by his direction and whims. They end with “Butcher Baker (Robert Hansen)” and wah-drench the middle before going back to the verse and chorus before jamming out, but even as madcap as the song gets, Kazuhiro comes back on for a final verse to end out, because whatever else Church of Misery are, whoever else they are, as they approach the 30th year of their tenure, they are songwriters. Tatsu is a songwriter. They just make it sound like they’re completely out of control, and the methodical, almost ritualized nature of what they do is perhaps an even greater tie to their subject matter. They are masters of what they do. Wherever you sit on the scale of interest in serial killers or murder more generally, their mastery on display is something to appreciate.
Japanese psychedelic rockers Tō Yō will release their debut album, Stray Birds From the Far East, on Aug. 18 through King Volume Records and Kozmik Artifactz. With depth of arrangement enough to allow for the various effects and hand percussion, shifting moods coming and going, as well as funky grooves and broadened sometimes folkish vocal melodies from guitarist Masami Makino, the six-song/30-minute offering brings forth a vibrant, movement-ready psychedelia that’s not shy about freaking out in the wah-soaked, let’s-bang-on-stuff ending of “Tears of the Sun” or the thicker fuzz of the subsequent “Titania Skyline,” but the band introduce themselves gently if quickly on opener “Soaring,” as if in the first 45 seconds or so, they’re looking around at reality and saying, “Okay, we tried that, now let’s move on to this,” and citing the drift/strum guitars of Masami and Sebun Tanji, Issaku Vincent‘s boogie bass and Hibiki Amano‘s drumming and percussion as an alternate, perhaps preferable path to follow. The argument made is convincing.
Its personality is complex enough to be more than one thing even sometimes at once, but Stray Birds From the Far East never quite lets go of its abidingly mellow spirit, which even as “Soaring” moves into start-stop jangle near its finish, percussion going all-in underneath, holds steady. Funk is at the forefront on “Hyu Dororo,” which goes dream-tone in its bridge but returns to the verse, and side A’s capper “Twin Mountains” melts vintage heavy rock and psychedelia together so that the snare and hand-drum meet up on the beat as the howling guitar solo floats ahead before the second verse starts up in the same stratosphere. At 3:41, the song is short — the shortest on the LP, but not by a ton — but even in that more clear structure, the feel Tō Yō present is organic, prone to subtlety and given to a kind of communion with its own making.
One often thinks of the phrase ‘locked in’ as a way to convey a band effectively communicating with each other musically, perhaps to the exclusion of the outside world. The rhythm and melody and interplay of instruments becomes the thing. Tō Yō are locked in on Stray Birds From the Far East, but far from keeping listeners on the other side of the door, the warmth of their tones and sometimes soft vocals and the feeling of motion in the low end and percussion give an unmistakable feeling of welcome to the entire proceedings.
They might be locked in, but that doesn’t mean you’re not invited too. Talking about “Soaring” below, they call it danceable, which is true of much of the record thanks to the interplay of various rhythms, and as “Tears of the Sun” moves deeper into its second half, the build in intensity is resonant enough to feel in your blood, even if as much as I agree with the physical urgency there, I wouldn’t call the leadoff or anything that follows ‘primitive’ in either its construction or the end-product of the arrangements themselves, though there are certainly aspects of traditional Japanese folk music, as well as some hints of Mediterranean traditionalism and/or Afrobeat — one hates to use a phrase like ‘world music’ — to go along with a wash that might be familiar to those who’ve previously dived into the work of outfits like Dhidalah or others from the Guruguru Brain Records-fostered, deeply-adventurous current generation of J-psych.
“Titania Skyline” is positioned ahead of closer “Li Ma Li” and starts its verse early to reground after “Tears of the Sun” left off with such a noiseblast. Backing vocals, a steady, jazzy snare and noodly rhythmic figure on guitar below the lead provide ample groove as a foundation, and after dropping a quick hint of Captain Beyond‘s “Mesmerization Eclipse,” they embark at 2:45 into a follow-up raucous jam to reinforce that of “Tears of the Sun” prior, never losing the underlying progression until it drops to a quick bite of feedback as preface to “Li Ma Li,” which begins with swirl behind a mellow-funk nod, spaces out the vocals engagingly and adds what sounds like organ or other synth that bolsters the classic vibe in a manner righteous and well-placed. The vocals reside in a kind of sub-falsetto upper register, and the shift is fascinating.
The song will solidify near the end — relatively speaking — around a steady riff and a bit of low-key scorch, but the proceedings are friendly regardless, and that initial gentle sensibility from “Soaring” is a further unifier of the material that enters Tō Yō into the vibrant fray of the Japanese psychedelic underground, showing them as willing to explore new ideas even as they bask in decades’ worth of lysergic aural influence. Subdued but not lazy, Stray Birds From the Far East finds its balance in fluidity and feels like the breakthrough point of a seed that will continue to flower over future outings. One hopes for precisely that.
You can stream “Soaring” on the player below, followed by some comment from Tō Yō and info from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Tō Yō, “Soaring” track premiere
Tō Yō on “Soaring”:
This track anticipates the beginning of the journey and is a good entry point into our world. The lyrics are spiritual, in that the land of the unseen is always inside of you. Imagine flying somewhere far away and returning home as completely synonymous.
The beat is very danceable, maybe not rock-like in a sense, but considering the connection between the slow tempo parts, this was the best way to create the most beautiful transitions. It’s obvious how many instruments are used to create the beat, but that’s not what we intended, in a way, the melody is almost entirely left to the vocals, which calls to mind a primitive form of musical expression. I think this primal juxtaposition helps induce a sense of spirituality.
Most of the tracks were created from jamming, and we thought about what percussion would be great for the track while recording, which is our style. Most of the percussion was improvised by our crazy drummer Hibiki.
Tō Yō, the Tokyo-based psychedelic quartet, has announced their debut record Stray Birds From the Far East—a dreamy, pop-infused psych/acid rock concept album about nostalgia for a place yet to be discovered—to be released through King Volume Records on August 18, 2023.
The Tō Yō sound is simultaneously unique yet familiar—but it’s also moving. “Our psychedelic sound is at times violent and at times naïve,” says vocalist and guitarist Masami Makinom, “but we also believe our sound is meant to awaken the most primitive senses in order to sublimate the rise of the soul and its uncontrollable impulses.”
Tō Yō is an ambitious band with an ambitious vision, so it’s no surprise some of their biggest influences are known for complex, groundbreaking visions; Far East Family Band, J. A. Seazer, Flower Travellin’ Band, Kikagaku Moyo, YU Grupa, Ali Farka Touré, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Red Hot Chili Peppers all show up in the list of the band’s most important influences.
As a self-described jam band, hashing out Tō Yō’s songs in the studio was a necessity, but it also proved to be a strategic benefit, as working with engineer Yui Kimijima at Tsubame Studio (the mecca for today’s Japanese psychedelic rock) in Tokyo helped the band take their sound to the next level.
“He is not sparing in his experimentation,” says Makinom. “In fact, the studio has a wonderful atmosphere that inspires the imagination, with instruments that we have never touched, and things that were originally used for other purposes but can function as instruments. For example, in ‘Tears of the Sun,’ the glittering steel popping sound in the second half is actually the sound of a tarai—a tin tub.”
With Tō Yō, the band embarks on an ambitious journey of experimentation and musical risks, but this has led to a colorful and often unpredictable sonic tapestry that embodies their myriad influences while combining with the heroics of indie darlings Built to Spill, the shimmering charm of My Morning Jacket, the carefree spirit of surf rock, and the wild, swirling sounds of the psychedelic giants of the 1970s.
Recording: Yui Kimijima at Tsubame Studio in Asakusabashi, Tokyo Mastering: Yui Kimijima at Tsubame Studio in Asakusabashi, Tokyo Art: Todd Ryan White
Tracklisting: Side A: 1. Soaring 2. Hyu Dororo 3. Twin Mountains Side B: 4. Tears of the Sun 5. Titania Skyline 6. Li Ma Li
Posted in Questionnaire on October 6th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Sven Shah from Blasting Rod
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Both myself and probably others would most likely call it, “Messin’ around.”
I like to do something and see what happens. I tend to take the ball and run with it. Depending on who I’m working with, that can be an asset, or a deal breaker. As drummer and executive producer, Chihiro keeps me anchored, or at least within sight of the shoreline. I’m getting better at delegating, but my peers often tell me I’m working too hard and doing too much myself, while also ignoring conventions that remove any need for thinking. They aren’t wrong, but I don’t want to be in a Zappa position where I’m telling everyone what they have to, or not do I want to just accept convention as wrote.
I want my collaborators to have the freedom to make it their thing, too. I like a bit of chaos in the band. That way it can be thrilling for me and hopefully provides a sense of anticipation for those seeing us again. I think it’s important to be light on your feet so you can be open to changing course onto a path that you had not even initially put into the map. If the size of the group swells with people who are working to too tight a brief it becomes more difficult to make those sorts of spontaneous decisions.
On the other hand I do want to do some Blasting Rod Big Band shows with a horn section and additional percussionists on some songs. Having more people contributing sounds means that each person needs to contribute less, which might actually free me up to do some spontaneous conducting, or be more deliberate. A lot of musicians talk about having a sound in their head, but I tend to run with an actual sound. As George Harrison said, to allow it to be what it was always going to become. For me, personally, it’s important that “things” develop organically, but that involves understanding where the sounds are going.
Not sure how I arrived at this approach. It sounds more than a bit cliché to attribute it to the influence of Zen, but I have long been attracted to indeterminism, getting lost and finding my way home, both metaphorically and physically. Japanese animist beliefs tend to favor fate, but that is often counterbalanced by an impulse to micromanage and hint of real nature out of something. In order to maintain spontaneity and allow the hand of fate it’s place at the table we record together without a click and overdub layers by feel. Most, not all, of the guitar solos are improvised at the same time the bass and drums are recorded, and all of the bass improv. Variations in tempo are just as crucial to dynamics as fluctuations in volume.
Describe your first musical memory.
My Dad handing me a harmonica, or maybe it was a kazoo, then dropping the needle on a 45 of Love Me Do by The Beatles, and the two of us improvising on harmonica, or harmonica and kazoo, to that record is the earliest concrete memory of being aware of music. I may have been four?
Describe your best musical memory to date.
This is much more difficult. I’ll go with picking up a miracle ticket outside the box-office of a sold-out John McLaughlin trio concert in Montreal. Just happened to see he was playing, turned up ticketless and was immediately turned away. Some nearby had one extra, sold it at cost, and I got to see the concert, but alone. Having no idea what to expect, only knowing McLaughlin’s name from every single guitarist name-checking him in guitar mag interviews, at some point in the show I was levitating about 10 inches above my seat, and I was stone cold sober.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Every time I plug my gear in. I believe it’s gonna work, however some trial inevitably awaits. Great successes are often born from the darkest depths of despair.
This is a result of willingly bucking convention, and occasionally I have to cave in to conventional wisdom. An example of this being my belief that an LP with digital download coupon is superior to a CD. Not in Japan. I finally had to relent to the mounting claims of, “I don’t have space for a turntable and I don’t use my computer to listen to music.” Blasting Rod III and our upcoming solstice album are both being issued as limited edition CDs in Japan.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I have a pet theory, that I know in my heart is false, that bands start out as garage punk, but eventually become prog if they continue to challenge themselves. Bands that stay punk are admirable in their dedication. That intricacy can also eventually evolve into minimalism as the essence of the work becomes clearer. Although we are constantly challenging ourselves to do something, if even just slightly, different, we also make a conscious effort to keep the presentation casual, and tap into the energy of the moment. In other words, even though we have a progressive stance, perfection is overrated.
How do you define success?
Being able to do whatever want… No. No. I want a 12 cylinder Ferrari… but seriously, freedom is the ultimate success, and even the definition of that freedom is measured on a sliding scale. Having nothing is both freeing and constricting, for example, but which draws one’s focus?
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Saw a guy fall out of a moving train just after departing Howrah Station in Calcutta. Thankfully for me his landing was obscured by some shrubbery, but certainly it did not end well for him, regardless of my visual comfort. I guess in a way I’m glad I saw it. After that I was a lot more careful near open train doors.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Ha! It would be quite easy to get snarky about this and say a multi-platinum selling retirement piece, but actually we keep putting off the recording of this long-form song of the mystical Orient that was inspired in nearly equal parts by India, Thailand, and Japan, yet is still unable to escape rock’n’roll. Wow. I’m really propping up expectations with that description. Let’s just call it our “Jazz Odyssey”, a 15 minute raga rock number. We still have some other more concise songs in pocket, but rather than do a side-long Atom Heart Mother with a few other tunes on the opposite side, I’ve hit upon a much more excessive plan, which is to record both acoustic and electric versions with each taking up a full side. Now, if that isn’t decadent enough for you, I already have a six-hour album of solo guitar improv in the key of C# based on insufficiently studied Hindustani ragas each titled by a full 17 syllable haiku. This future Blasting Rod album idea is the height of commercialism by those standards.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
The art that is most appealing to me, at least, is art that provides a transportative experience out of normal expectations and experiences. That can be something fantastic like Dali’s Hallucinogenic Toreador, or just the opposite, something that may be so ordinary that it makes you completely rethink all of your notions of art simply by defying them entirely. At the very least it should move the mind, if not the heart as well.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I can’t wait to get away to some Pacific islands again, but a weedy gray Central Japanese beach will probably have to do for the foreseeable future. I’ll take it! Everything else on my calendar, that I’m looking forward to at least, is music related. The beach isn’t even on the calendar yet. Scratch that, Chihiro just informed me that we’re booked into a hotel in Okinawa for a late summer holiday…which, presumably, is why she’s been too busy to fill out her questionnaire
This week, Sonic Flower release what’s ostensibly their third album, Me and My Bell Bottom Blues through Heavy Psych Sounds, and perhaps with it make for themselves a new beginning. Formed more than 20 years ago by Tatsu Mikami of Church of Misery, who even by then had established himself as one of the world’s foremost conjurors of Riff — I mean that — the band first signed to Leaf Hound Records to release their entirely instrumental 2003 self-titled debut (reissue review here) before calling it quits during the making of what Heavy Psych Sounds unearthed last year to offer as a short second LP, Rides Again (review here), in 2005. If you’re reading this, you probably know a decent portion of the rest of the story. Church of Misery continued to take off internationally, became a firm priority for Tatsu even amid an ever-changing lineup, and apart from a prior reissue on Emetic Records in the US, Sonic Flower remained largely a footnote to be appreciated by those who were fortunate enough to have chased them down in the first place.
Me and My Bell BottomBlues hits this obscurity like a train on a grand and funky railroad, with seven fully realized verse-and-chorus songs — not pieces that might’ve been expanded, not instrumentals; nothing against either of those things, mind you — that brim with energy as Tatsu is joined by drummer Toshiaki Umemura, guitarist Fumiya Hattori and vocalist Kazuhiro Asaeda in an ace incarnation of Sonic Flower, built around the purpose of conveying the spirit of classic heavy rock while demonstrating their own righteousness in the form. With production by Eternal Elysium‘s Yukito Okazaki, the indication would seem to be that Sonic Flower are more of a band than they’ve ever been. I don’t know what Church of Misery have been up to since announcing they’d record a new album in August — also with Toshiaki on drums — but Sonic Flower do not sound like a side-project on these songs, and whether it’s the layered-in acoustics of “Black Sheep” or the swinging jam in “Poor Girl” or the riotous stomp of “Swineherd” that sets the high bar for what follows as the leadoff cut, there’s vitality, electricity, palpable. When they finish with the eponymous “Sonic Flower,” it feels declarative.
Wherever Fumiya came from, the young gentleman can shred and then some. It’s strum and slide acoustic in the beginning of “Quicksand Planet,” on “Sonic Flower” it’s a running heavy blues entrusted over Tatsu‘s bassline, and on “Love Like Rubber” he brings the start-stop groove forward as punctuated by Toshiaki‘s snare while Kazuhiro sneers out the verse lines in a style that is soulful and over-the-top in kind — just the right blend for a band who are spitting hot, distorted fire across the album’s entire span. And in that span, to hear them move as a unit from the balls-out swaggering proto-doom of centerpiece “Captain Frost” through “Quicksand Planet” and into the funky outset of “Poor Girl” (8:15) with the sprawling, not-coming-back jam taking hold before the track’s even hit its fourth minute, and then to answer that with the nine-minute “Sonic Flower,” inevitably expansive, but also rich in its vocal layering circa 3:10, and tease doing the same thing with a break before returning — led by Fumiya‘s guitar — to a triumphant structural bookend from whence they once more take flight and jam into the last fadeout only highlights the mastery at work in Tatsu‘s songwriting.
It’s hard not to think of the bassist as an auteur generally, but perhaps easier here since Fumiya, Toshiaki and Kazuhiro bring so much to the finished product and Me and My Bell Bottom Blues is so complete sounding in its still-manageable 46 minutes. But it is Tatsu at the heart of the band, and there’s a long history behind him of trading out members between releases, tours, etc., in this project as well as Church of Misery, so I won’t claim to know one way or the other what will follow for Sonic Flower. As it stands, though, Me and My Bell Bottom Blues is easy to be excited about because the music itself is excited as much as exciting, and with that, one struggles not to ponder the possibilities for this incarnation of the group. I’m not saying Sonic Flower could never release another good album if anyone left or was let go, only that Sonic Flower as they are in 2022 have put together something pretty special in these songs. Whatever else the future might bring — if it’s some more of the kind of hard boogie in “Love Like Rubber,” that’d be just fine, thanks — the declarations made within the tracks of Me and My Bell Bottom Blues and the overarching move-your-body feel of the entirety are not to be missed.
So don’t miss them. Full album is streaming below, followed by more from the PR wire.
Enjoy:
Sonic Flower, Me and My Bell Bottom Blues album premiere
SONIC FLOWER was formed as a side project of Church of Misery in 2001. Tatsu Mikami (Church Of Misery bassist) and Takenori Hoshi (guitarist on Church of Misery’s second album “The Second Coming”) teamed up to play more bluesy and instrumental heavy rock influenced by 70’s acts such as Cactus, Grand Funk Railroads, Groundhogs or Savoy Brown. Guitarist Arisa and drummer Keisuke Fukawa quickly joined them. In 2003, they released their bluesy heavy rock self-titled debut album ‘Sonic Flower’ on Japanese label Leafhound Records. This instrumental, improvised double guitar-charged record was internationally acclaimed, and they got the chance to support Electric Wizard, Bluebird or Acid King on their Japan shows.
In 2005, SONIC FLOWER went to the studio to record new material, but as Arisa was pregnant and day jobs prevailed, they put the band on hiatus after the recording session. These recordings have been sleeping in the vault for fifteen years until Tatsu decided to reform the band in 2018. This time he teamed up with former Church Of Misery singer: the result was their new album ‘Rides Again’, 2021 through Heavy Psych Records. Their brand new album ‘Me and My Bellbottom Blues’ sees guitarist Fumiya Hattori joining on guitar, for a late September release on the Italian label. Recorded in Tokyo in early 2022 and mixed by Japanese doom guru Yukito Okazaki of Eternal Elysium fame, “Me And My Bellbottom Blues” is “their biggest work to date”, according to Mikami.
SONIC FLOWER is: Tatsu Mikami – Bass Kazuhiro Asaeda – Vocals Fumiya Hattori — Guitar Toshiaki Umemura – Drums
Posted in Reviews on September 27th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Here we go again as we get closer to 100 records covered in this expanded Fall 2022 Quarterly Review. It’s been a pretty interesting ride so far, and as I’ve dug in I know for sure I’ve added a few names (and titles) to my year-end lists for albums, debuts, and so on. Today keeps the thread going with a good spread of styles and some very, very heavy stuff. If you haven’t found anything in the bunch yet — first I’d tell you to go back and check again, because, really? nothing in 60 records? — but after that, hey, maybe today’s your day.
Here’s hoping.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Spirit Adrift, 20 Centuries Gone
The second short release in two years from trad metal forerunners Spirit Adrift, 20 Centuries Gone pairs two new originals in “Sorcerer’s Fate” and “Mass Formation Psychosis” — songs for our times written as fantasy narrative — with six covers, of Type O Negative‘s “Everything Dies,” Pantera‘s “Hollow,” Metallica‘s “Escape,” Thin Lizzy‘s “Waiting for an Alibi,” ZZ Top‘s “Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings” and Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Poison Whiskey.” The covers find them demonstrating a bit of malleability — founding guitarist/vocalist does well with Phil Lynott‘s and Peter Steele‘s inflections while still sounding like himself — and it’s always a novelty to hear a band purposefully showcase their influences like this, but “Sorcerer’s Fate” and “Mass Formation Psychosis” are the real draw. The former nods atop a Candlemassian chug and sweeping chorus before spending much of its second half instrumental, and “Mass Formation Psychosis” resolves in burly riffing, but only after a poised rollout of classic doom, slower, sleeker in its groove, with acoustic strum layered in amid the distortion and keyboard. Two quick reaffirmations of the band’s metallic flourishing and, indeed, a greater movement happening partially in their wake. And then the covers, which are admirably more than filler in terms of arrangement. Something of a holdover, maybe, but by no means lacking substance.
Just because it’s so bludgeoning doesn’t necessarily mean that’s all it is. The melodic stretch of “Forbidden World of Light” and delve into progressive black metal after the nakedly Crowbarian sludge of “A Path Beyond Grief,” the clean vocal-topped atmospheric heft of “What Must Be Done” and the choral feel of centerpiece “Carried,” even the way “Of Shadow and Sanguine” seems to purposefully thrash (also some more black metal there) amid its bouts of deathcore and sludge lumbering — all of these come together to make Northless‘ fourth long-player, A Path Beyond Grief, an experience that’s still perhaps defined by its intensity and concrete tonality, its aggression, but that is not necessarily beholden to those. Even the quiet intro “Nihil Sanctum Vitae” — a seeming complement to the nine-minute bring-it-all-together closer “Nothing That Lives Will Last” — seems intended to tell the listener there’s more happening here than it might at first seem. As someone who still misses Swarm of the Lotus, some of the culmination in that finale is enough to move the blood in my wretched body, but while born in part of hardcore, Northless are deep into their own style throughout these seven songs, and the resultant smashy smashy is able to adjust its own elemental balance while remaining ferociously executed. Except, you know, when it’s not. Because it’s not just one thing.
Comprised of five songs running a tidy 20 minutes, each brought together through ambience as well as the fact that their titles are all three letters long — “Aer,” “Hyd,” “Orb,” “Wiz,” “Rue” — AER is the debut EP from German instrumentalists Lightrain, who would seek entry into the contemplative and evocative sphere of acts like Toundra or We Lost the Sea as they offer headed-out post-rock float and heavy psychedelic vibe. “Hyd” is a focal point, both for its eight-minute runtime (nothing else is half that long) and the general spaciousness, plus a bit of riffy shove in the middle, with which it fills that, but the ultra-mellow “Aer” and drumless wash of “Wiz” feed into an overarching flow that speaks to greater intentions on the part of the band vis a vis a first album. “Rue” is progressive without being overthought, and “Orb” feels born of a jam without necessarily being that jam, finding sure footing on ground that for many would be uncertain. If this is the beginning point of a longer-term evolution on the part of the band, so much the better, but even taken as a standalone, without consideration for the potential of what it might lead to, the LP-style fluidity that takes hold across AER puts the lie to its 20 minutes being somehow minor.
Cleanly produced and leaning toward sleaze at times in a way that feels purposefully drawn from ’80s glam metal, the second offering from Poland’s 1965 — they might as well have called themselves 1542 for as much as they have to do sound-wise with what was going on that year — is the 12-song/52-minute Panther, which wants your nuclear love on “Nuclear Love,” wants to rock on “Let’s Rock,” and would be more than happy to do whatever it wants on “Anything We Want.” Okay, so maybe guitarist, vocalist and principal songwriter Michał Rogalski isn’t going to take home gold at the Subtlety Olympics, but the Warsaw-based outfit — him plus Marco Caponi on bass/backing vocals and Tomasz Rudnicki on drums/backing vocals, as well as an array of lead guitarists guesting — know the rock they want to make, and they make it. Songs are tight and well performed, heavy enough in tone to have a presence but fleet-footed in their turns from verse to chorus and the many trad-metal-derived leads. Given the lyrics of the title-track, I’m not sure positioning oneself as an actual predatory creature as a metaphor for seduction has been fully thought through, but you don’t see me out here writing lyrics in Polish either, so take it with that grain of salt if you feel the need or it helps. For my money I’ll take the still-over-the-top “So Many Times” and the sharp start-stops of “All My Heroes Are Dead,” but there’s certainly no lack of others to choose from.
Blacklab — also stylized BlackLab — are the Osaka, Japan-based duo of guitarist/vocalist Yuko Morino and drummer Chia Shiraishi, but if you’d enter into their second full-length, In a Bizarre Dream, expecting some rawness or lacking heft on account of their sans-bass configuration, you’re more likely to be bowled over by the sludgy tonality on display. “Cold Rain” — opener and longest track (immediate points) at 6:13 — and “Abyss Woods” are largely screamers, righteously harsh with riffs no less biting, and “Dark Clouds” does the job in half the time with a punkier onslaught leading to “Evil 1,” but “Evil 2” mellows out a bit, adjusts the balance toward clean singing and brooding in a way that the oh-hi-there guest vocal contribution from Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab (after whom Blacklab are partially named) on “Crows, Sparrows and Cats” shifts into a grungier modus. “Lost” and “In a Bizarre Dream,” the latter more of an interlude, keep the momentum going on the rock side, but somehow you just know they’re going to turn it around again, and they absolutely do, easing their way in with the largesse of “Monochrome Rainbow” before “Collapse” caps with a full-on onslaught that brings into full emphasis how much reach they have as a two-piece and just how successfully they make it all heavy.
I guess the only problem that might arise from recording your first two-songer with Steve Albini is that you’ve set an awfully high standard for, well, every subsequent offering your band ever makes in terms of production. There are traces of Karma to Burn-style chug on “Ectotherm,” the A-side accompanied by “Writhing Mass” on the two-songer that shares the same name, but Chicago imstrumental trio Sun King Ba are digging into more progressively-minded, less-stripped-down fare on both of these initial tracks. Still, impact and the vitality of the end result are loosely reminiscent, but the life on that guitar, bass and drums speaks volumes, and not just in favor of the recording itself. “Writhing Mass” crashes into tempo changes and resolves itself in being both big and loud, and the space in the cymbals alone as it comes to its noisy finish hints at future incursions to be made. Lest we forget that Chicago birthed Pelican and Bongripper, among others, for the benefit of instrumental heavy worldwide. Sun King Ba have a ways to go before they’re added to that list, but there is intention being signaled here for those with ears to hear it.
Despite the somewhat grim imagery on the cover art for Kenodromia‘s self-titled debut EP — a three-cut outing that marks a return to the band of vocalist Hilde Chruicshank after some stretch of absence during which they were known as Hideout — the Oslo, Norway, four-piece play heavy rock through and through on “Slandered,” “Corrupted” and “Bound,” with the bluesy fuzzer riffs and subtle psych flourishes of Eigil Nicolaisen‘s guitar backing Chruicshank‘s lyrics as bassist Michael Sindhu and drummer Trond Buvik underscore the “break free” moment in “Corrupted,” which feels well within its rights in terms of sociopolitical commentary ahead of the airier start of “Bound” after the relatively straightforward beginning that was “Slandered.” With the songs arranged shortest to longest, “Bound” is also the darkest in terms of atmosphere and features a more open verse, but the nod that defines the second half is huge, welcome and consuming even as it veers into a swaggering kind of guitar solo before coming back to finish. These players have been together one way or another for over 10 years, and knowing that, Kenodromia‘s overarching cohesion makes sense. Hopefully it’s not long before they turn attentions toward a first LP. They’re clearly ready.
Mezzoa are the San Diego three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Ignacio “El Falcone” Maldonado, bassist Q “Dust Devil” Pena (who according to their bio was created in the ‘Cholo Goth Universe,’ so yes, charm is a factor), and drummer Roy “Bam Bam” Belarmino, and the 13-track/45-minute Dunes of Mars is their second album behind 2017’s Astral Travel. They sound like a band who’ve been around for a bit, and indeed they have, playing in other bands and so on, but they’ve got their approach on lockdown and I don’t mean for the plague. The material here, whether it’s the Helmet-plus-melody riffing of “Tattoos and Halos” or the more languid roll of the seven-minute “Dunes of Mars” earlier on, is crisp and mature without sounding flat or staid creatively, and though they’re likened most to desert rock and one can hear that in the penultimate “Seized Up” a bit, there’s more density in the guitar and bass, and the immediacy of “Hyde” speaks of more urgent influences at work. That said, the nodding chill-and-chug of “Moya” is heavy whatever landscape you want to say birthed it, and with the movement into and out of psychedelic vibes, the land is something you’re just as likely to leave behind anyway. Hit me as a surprise. Don’t be shocked if you end up going back to check out the first record after.
Released through emergent Texas-based imprint Gravitoyd Heavy Music, Stone Nomads‘ Fields of Doom comprises six songs, five originals, and is accordingly somewhere between a debut full-length and an EP at half an hour long. The cover is a take on Saint Vitus‘ “Dragon Time,” and it rests well here as the closer behind the prior-released single “Soul Stealer,” as bassist Jude Sisk and guitarist Jon Cosky trade lead vocal duties while Dwayne Crosby furthers the underlying metallic impression on drums, pushing some double-kick gallop under the solo of “Fiery Sabbath” early on after the leadoff title-track lumbers and chugs and bell-tolls to its ending, heavy enough for heavy heads, aggro enough to suit your sneer, with maybe a bit of Type O Negative influence in the vocal. Huffing oldschool gasoline, Fields of Doom might prove too burled-out for some listeners, but the interlude “Winds of Barren Lands” and the vocal swaps mean that you’re never quite sure where they’re going to hit you next, even if you know the hit is coming, and even as “Soul Stealer” goes grandiose before giving way to the already-noted Vitus cover. And if you’re wondering, they nail the noise of the solo in that song, leaving no doubt that they know what they’re doing, with their own material or otherwise.
Drawing from various corners of punk, noise rock and heavy rock’s accessibility, Munich trio Blind Mess offer their third full-length in After the Storm, which is aptly-enough titled, considering. “Fight Fire with Fire” isn’t a cover, but the closing “What’s the Matter Man?” is, of Rollins Band, no less, and they arrive there after careening though a swath of tunes like “Twilight Zone,” “At the Gates” and “Save a Bullet,” which are as likely to be hardcore-born shove or desert-riffed melody, and in the last of those listed there, a little bit of both. To make matters more complicated, “Killing My Idols” leans into classic metal in its underlying riff as the vocals bark and its swing is heavy ’70s through and through. This aesthetic amalgam holds together in the toughguy march of “Sirens” as much as the garage-QOTSA rush of “Left to Do” and the dares-to-thrash finish of “Fight Fire with Fire” since the songs themselves are well composed and at 38 minutes they’re in no danger of overstaying their welcome. And when they get there, “What’s the Matter Man?” makes a friendly-ish-but-still-confrontational complemement to “Left to Do” back at the outset, as though to remind us that wherever they’ve gone over the course of the album between, it’s all been about rock and roll the whole time. So be it.
