DMK

RYORCHESTRA is basically the duo of Ryoko Ono and Atsutomo Ishigaki. Ono is well known as a Japanese flautist and saxophonist and was born in Sapporo and currently resides in Nagoya. She has been on the scene for quite some time cranking out some of the wildest improvisational music that Japan has offered but also has been at home playing the blues, jazz, progressive rock, noise rock and other forms of avant-garde music. She has been involved in numerous band experiences including Plastic Dogs, Gakusei Jikken Shitsu, O-Jazz, Murmur, Ryogui, RyokoSam and Sax Ruins. Ishigaki while not as well known is a bassist who has appeared in Next Order and with the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Nagoya.

Together these two crank out a seriously wild and unhinged album with DMK which is based on the traditional French zeuhl rhythms but also includes the noisiest effects of the Japanese zeuhl scene as in the vein of Ruins and Koenjihyakkei. DMK features eight tracks at about 43 minutes of playing time and features Ono on alto sax, keyboards, flute and backing vocals and Ishigaki on bass however this is a band effort with other musicians joining in. Yasuhiro and Yuji Muto perform some powerful guitar parts and Nobukazu Katagiri offers the percussion. There are also numerous vocalists which include Sayaka Shiraki, Daijiro Matsuda and Yuzumi Tanimukai.

DMK is a varied album indeed and finds that perfect balance between extremely melodic and inviting with the excessively brutal and bombastic. The sweet flute performances and slew of female vocalists providing the stentorian choir antics of Magma can cede to a brash guitar based noisy style of metal with growly vocals accompanied by John Zorn inspired saxophone frenzies. Much attention is paid to how these two extremes balance out and in the end it's actually a perfected recipe. The album is both exquisitely rhythmic and beautifully melodic while adding chaotic brutal prog elements for a major contrast at the right places and never for so long that it all outstays its welcome. The album is always in danger of becoming too sickly sweet or derailing into a complete chaotic mess but Ono has mastered the Japanese art of balancing these two dynamics like a samurai.

The bizarre "Night Song" is one of the more placid moments on the album but finds its own methodology of conveying bizarre musical freedom especially towards the end as the bass grooves reach virtuosic intensity and then the guitar and sax chaos erupts but for the majority of the track it's almost the closest thing the album has to a "ballad." The songs while quite different from each other all share the same basic characteristics by providing the classic over-the-top Japanese style of zeuhl that runs the gamut from placidly beautiful to hysterically dramatic. Operatic vocals whiz up and down the octaves in pure angelic form while other vocalists scream, growl and deliver anguishing, even hellish sounds while tempos may simmer on slow and blissful to as fast as possible with all the instruments fighting it out to be heard.

While many of the characteristics displayed by RYORCHESTRA aren't unknown in the whacky world of Japanese zeuhl, this band certainly has taken it all to a more polished and streamlined level without sacrificing either melodic control or noisy chaotic eruptions. The ultimate beauty and the beast type of album, Ono has struck gold again in her zany cult way and remains one of the top acts in this strange nook of the Japanese underground. DMK in effects delivers all the right ingredients in the right proportions to make a delicious musical bento box of top notch extreme zeuhl madness for you and your demented loved ones to thoroughly enjoy at a quality control that is unthinkable in how many details were ironed out to craft such an intricately precise album. Highly recommended and one of my favorite Japanese zeuhl albums of the modern era!