MITSUGI (ESOTERIC RITUALS)

Tremendous music talent holders bumping together ... sometimes their creation can go well, and sometimes cannot.

MAMMAL MACHINE have got started as a novel psychedelic rock project around a talented musician Yumi Hara CAWKWELL. Not only Yumi but also the members around her are terrifically renowned and skilled ones, experienced in psychedelic progressive rock. A super project as it is said. Throughout this album, Yasuyuki WATANABE's flexible and drastic percussion & drumming, and Mitsuru TABATA's fuzzy, trippy guitar squeeze are very impressive for listeners definitely. And Yumi's keyboard play can invade into our heart smoothly (and often aggressively). Please let me recommend especially the last track "The Lost Archive Of The BMIC", where the four talented gangsters do a bulky instrumental battle against each other and simultaneously create a magnificent psychedelia we cannot have met. Completely free style they have showed but we cannot help feeling their perfect unity. Furthermore, would you like to touch the first track "Das Glasperlenspiel" (title in German!) and feel mysterious, sensual, hypnotic world in them? And very fantastic the bridge between "Fledermäuse Auf Der Autobahn" and "Pferdeeisenbahn" is ... "Fledermäuse" can remind me fantasia by Neu! or Amon Düül, and suddenly contrastive cloudy darkness comes via "Pferdeeisenbahn", with Rie's deep, deeeep bass earthquake. As honestly I say, this one could let me cherish a huge hope that we can get a novel Japanese psychedelic progressive gem.

Back to my opening remark - sadly the other tracks could not ring my bell, as the first and the last could do. It's said all songs were composed by the outfit under improvisation, and lyrics written by Yumi ... I wish she could exert more of her personality and originality ... but aggressively loud guitar and percussion sounds (by Mitsuru and Yasuyuki) drive out her delicate and sensitive keyboard work methinks. I've felt LBM-ish or Marbie flavour there, not Yumi's authentic music roots collective. Indeed this creation is great as a psychedelic progressive rock stuff, though.

So that let me say, in this project work they cannot exert "their" perfect originality, due to perfect originality of each player.

MAMMAL MACHINE are a new super group from Japan. Every single member brings much experience from other bands in (Leningrad Blues Machine, Marble Sheep, Boredoms). Keyborder Yumi Hara Cawkwell is also known for collaborating with diverse canterbury respectively jazz rock artists like Hugh Hopper or David Cross. Now at the end of 2010 this debut album was ready to be released on the famous Captain Trip Records label. Although rooted in psychedelic respectively spacey fields they widen the scope a lot towards krautrock and avantgarde here. I bet they've jammed for some hours and took the most promising excerpts to fill roundabout 60 minutes of rather experimental soundscapes.

So we have a really impressing start with Das Glasperlenspiel - wow ... a German title deriving from the eponymous Hermann Hesse novel I assume. And another wow ... what a wonderful jam is this, including (Japanese?) gong, some mysterious vocals ... and excellent soaring space guitar. The following Tale Of Eight Dog comes nearly in the same vein, bearing an hypnotic deep toned bass line and fuzzy electric guitar work. This is quite accessible so far, but gradually they step forward to more weirdness then.

The avant/krautrock flavoured The Don't Look Prohibition holds several portions, faded in and out - first starting with a strong 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' spirit .. ohhh, this warms my heart .. but then the prohibition claims attention, hahahaha ... they turn to another mood, a spaced out behaviour comprising bells, cymbals, diverse percussion instruments, otherworldly voices, creepy synths ... finally drifting into the cacophonous Quagga cosmos. But then The Lost Primer For The Secret Do falls back into space groove territories in between.

The Can/Amon Düül inspired Fledermäuse Auf der Autobahn showcases delicious vocals by Cawkwell where the halting Pferdeeisenbahn is another exemplar full of soaring space guitars which do not fail to reach for high altitudes here. Finally The Lost Archive Of The BMIC shows them off the beaten path due to an intense avantgarde attitude - the only song providing some keyboard work including piano which is really dominant.

MAMMAL MACHINE's output is definitely not dedicated to the last hour before you go to bed because very ambitious and not really relaxing. Sometimes the sound quality comes crude, probably with intent while adapting simple retro(spective) recording circumstances. Crawkwell's vocal contributions are rather excentric, however her organ work is generally restrained - which one or two will regret - in opposite to Mitsuru Tabata's varied and offensive guitar work. Due to their experimental spirit/approach, which shimmers through all the way, I consider this essential and very interesting for avant psych and krautrock lovers.