VUOY

(From PA blog "Japanese Progressive Rock presented by DamoX")

A great experimental Kraut-flavoured psychedelia under the fierce battle between Seiichi YAMAMOTO and Atsushi TSUYAMA - in OMOIDE HATOBA.

Just like an 'enjoyable' junk box this album is. Various 'gracious' and 'trashy' sounds are here - produced by two talented (but strange) players. From the beginning what a noisy hoot Splits is! Only eleven-second noise can open the curtain of the Vuoy stage. Following that, electronic goo-goo sounds and Seiichi's loud and echoic guitar solo take us into vacant Delayed Sky. Some rubbishy noises are comfortable rather than annoying, so mysteriously - this should be their eccentric power. (Indeed everyone says both Seiichi and Atsushi are seriously strange.) Scenes are frequently altered - heavy and danceable beats with nonsense electro-noises can let us palpitate aggressively in Mirage. Such a minimal electronika tastes Kraut-ish. Vuoy is one of masterpieces in this work, with thick musical aura and aurora. A sharp-edged violin solo is very spicy, and Seiichi's voices like spelling are very weird and hypnotic. Also as for Sugar Clip, another masterpiece and simultaneously the most poppy song in this album, we cannot understand what they are singing, but the obscure spelling with tricky scattered sound-dusts can kick us into Vuoychedelia. (By the way Seiichi's crazy appearance on the video clip of Sugar Clip is very laughable for watchers UNDOUBTEDLY!) Another salient characteristic I want to mention about is, they use various trashy stuffs for serious instruments and with these they can shoot various delightful sounds and noises in front of listeners. On the contrary, in the sixth track Rotary or the last one Figaro are only electronic percussive punches (and some overtones). Let me say, basically their musical attitude and movement could be taken over to Atsushi's next project SEIKAZOKU, where the members can play more flexible and less unitedly than in OMOIDE HATOBA.

Emphasize there's no work or product for us to enjoy such a dramatic sound variation - what an attractive junk box!

So I went to have my parrot re-aligned with the Equator here the other day and the streets were filled with blue dots and quivering jello like flickers that seemed to hang on the air itself. It was in fact music ebbing in and out of the dream, and now in an up-lit room the sounds presented themselves as a percussion fish being clawed upon, something akin to a violin, soothing surfer guitars and wonderfully magical synths waving back and forth like a sparkly strip club veil.

Que 90s dance music with beeping electric signals, scratching old school dj manoeuvres and that early Liam Howlett infatuated industrial palette. Laser beams interfere and a pair of mice start jumping on the old piano. Stops - and the funky earthy percussion takes over and somehow dives into the dance beats once again. Something or someone's signalling in Morse code now, and everything seems to be ready for an ending.

Russian punk music enters the room with jolly freaky violin joining the festivities. The beats grow sluggish and we get froggy bits of interweaving noises and back into the breach again we go with the surging punk energy that oddly enough now sports an altogether more ethereal touch. Ending with the wind the song fades away.

Acoustical fun, bouncy blues bass with a jumpy and slightly kling klangy feel to it. Recorded inside a skip probably. The mumbling Japanese laid back gibberish ornamenting the semi blues electronic music have a strange crooner facet to them that I really dig. Then the see saw guitars start, and we get twirled around with yet another chill out vocal spree.

The space toddlers arrive in plastic chains armed with tiny Casio synths and a metal banjo. They are about to go work in the mines, and they play this marching electronic ditty every morning.

Avantguarde drumming pounding away sounding like logs hitting a wash bucket - starts things up nicely - juicing up with some Crimsonesque angular guitar patterns, and then there's the guy in the back sounding like a deeply moving fog horn. There's a small silence before the storm, and we hear the rattlesnake jitter. Pounding again, we get the marching almost Zeuhlish beats blasting their way through a rocking storm of what could've been the soundtrack music to a fisherman's trance party.

Weeehooo!!!!! I'm gonna stop now. This was just an experiment in trying to write exactly what I felt and heard while listening to this Japanese venture. I've reviewed these guys before, and what you can expect from the music is a modern parallel to the Dadaistic movement. African masks, rancid butter, Hawaiian barbecues, Jacques Cousteau, lions and tigers, Karate and ninja moves. All of this you'll find inside this baby.

What I picked up on with Omoide Hatoba was their ability to take what Faust once did and mold it into something uniquely their own. I genuinely believe that. You can search long and hard for modern acts who've picked up the baton from Faust - even in Germany you'll struggle to find any real traces. Sure you do get a fair few copycats who've overdosed on the Krautrock track off of IV, but you rarely come across bands who've managed to take the eccentricity, off-kilter and at times extremely bizarre universe of Faust into a contemporary setting. You have to fly half way around the world to experience that with Omoide Hatoba.

Music like this plays around with your head. It goes from goofy RIO to beautiful ambient electronics in a heartbeat - only to zip straight into some Indian groove with tablas and the works, and then pop right into some chomping industrial dub step.

As much as this sounds like a personal vacation to the loony bin, there's still something that engages me with this band. This is not strange for the sake of being strange, no no no, in my mind this is music that tries to break down fences, but through music - not just arbitrary fun on instruments. There's a difference.