LOVE WILL MAKE A BETTER YOU

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

Honestly! I cannot help keeping my eyes and mouth open, touching this album by my ears.

LOVE LIVE LIFE, a Japanese psychedelic rock project, was a hotchpotch ensemble of talented rock musicians. Indeed you can imagine where this project should go as soon as you find the members, but, as I'm sure it's much important, this terribly terrific album could be produced not by LOVE LIVE LIFE, but by LOVE LIVE LIFE + ONE. Namely, Akira FUSE the vocalist could activate this project more and more I wanna say. Basically Akira is one of famous pop singers in Japan - he can remind almost all of Japanese a beautiful & plaintive ballad "Cyclamen No Kaori (Flavour of a cyclamen)" in 1975 - and currently for us Japanese it's beyond all imagination he could shout in such a psychedelic project. As if Percy Faith play rock (sorry).

Joking aside, without any suspicion he was the lead-off man of this project, not only plus one. Listen from the beginning, and feel the first track The Question Mark by your skin. Akira's whisper "I'm a human being, I'm a human." can take us over our surrealistic pillow to another psychedelia. And here come aggressive battles between a dry & metallic guitar, a keen and crazy flute, and incoherent but strict drums. What can let them play not only ramblingly but steadily? I do suggest they should feel the air - by their eyes and their ears, and especially their mind, feeling. Call the air "the spiritual force". Understand enough. Of all instruments, I consider, particularly Kosuke ICHIHARA and Toshiaki YOKOTA's flute duo can boil their psychedelic spirit, with the crazily eccentric wave and stream. And Kimio MIZUTANI's shocking-breaking guitar sounds must knock us out completely. We can be enough pleased by only this song aka jack-in-the-sounds.

After this song (that is, on B side of LP), Akira's voices are very cool but active. In the second track Running Free his voices are running like a cool wind on the turntable. The plaintive violin solo and the strong brass section can make his voices stronger and sharper. The next eponymous track Love Will Make A Better You can be called as a "psychedelic funk" with as funky shouts as James Brown, as honestly I feel - his voices are so strong and aggressive that can force us to think so, in my humble opinion. His ability for a singer, not a pop artist, we can realize enough on listening to a mid-to-fast psychedelic rock ballad Shadow Of The Mind, as well as the previous track. Akira's bright and brilliant voices can be approved even with some special effects or altered tempo - he grasps the musical ground by his fantastic vocal cord. The last slow blues Facts About It All can make our sensuous stomach completely full - full stomach by a ballad singer with another way of singin'...wonderful!

Once again I say; PLUS ONE is so important.

The first half of the 70's will always be the favourite period of fans of adventerous music and it's not close, in part because the record labels went along with it. Sure they wanted that single but other than that do what you want. I mention this because a project like Japan's LOVE LIVE LIFE + ONE doesn't happen except during this time frame. Imagine eight highly regarded session musicians and a well known singer who croons pop ballads getting together in February of 1971 and creating an album that Discogs describes as that bridge between the beat music of the 60's and that experimental style of the 70's. Julian Cope ranks this as the sixth best Japanese psychedelic album of the 50 in his list. Some respect here.

I can only imagine the shock of those who are fans of the singer Akira Fuse checking out this album and hearing him like they never have before(haha). The man can sing and he lets his hair down here sort of speak. Passionate and innovative like the music. He is the + ONE. The album was written and arranged by sax/flute player Kosuke Ichihara. And we have two sax/flute players, two percussionists, bass, two lead guitarists, keyboards and vocals. The keyboardist Hiro Yanagida released some solo albums including "Milk Time" which I recently reviewed and he was in FOOD BRAIN.

One of the guitarists released "A Path through Haze" which I'm a big fan of in 1971, that's Kimio Mizutani who also played on "Milk Time". Quite a few connections here which I love to talk about. LOVE LIVE LIFE + ONE released a few albums including one with Toshiyuki Miyamas' THE NEW HERD band. That band released an amazing experimental Big Band record called "Yamataifu". Maybe this is why I love Canterbury so much, very inbred. And there are more connections with these Japanese musicians including the bass player here being on "A Path Through Haze" by Kimio and more.

So we get a side long suite called "The Question Mark" at 18 minutes where it is established that is this a far out album to say the least. A real free jazz vibe at times, I mean I love that these are incredible musicians and while I'm not a big fan of this style, so much respect and I did enjoy this. The sax and flute are adventerous here and the guitar lights it up half way through followed by organ runs.

The other track that is like-minded is the second longest "Shadows Of The Mind" at almost 9 minutes where again we get a free jazz thing happening and some vocal gymnastics during the first half before it becomes more normal sounding. I like when both guitarists are doing their thing at the same time. Even the drums sound avant here and it ends experimentally. The other three tracks are between 3 and 4 1/2 minutes and are more bluesy like "Runnin' Free" dominated by flute and the title track with passionate bluesy vocals and the closer "Facts About It All" with the organ runs, jazzy guitar and horns.

While I'm far from in love with the music here I have so much respect for the adventerous spirit that is here is spades. Another must have from japan.