MASAKI BATOH

His only two solo works - A Ghost From The Darkened Sea and Kikaokubeshi - are sadly very hard for us to get in our hands. In 2004 they were reissued together by American independent label Drag City as 'Collected Works 1995-1996'. The compilation has two covers, Yoo Doo Right by CAN and World Of Pain by CREAM. Each song has Masaki's GHOSTLY style that the original one could not have, but not only this is his terrific soundscape, are you sure?

The graceful acoustic guitar solo surely shows Sham No Umi, the sea in Thailand, itself...I feel. The most beautiful and fantastic song in his works I imagine? And Spooky has lyrical sounds by xylophonic synthesizer sounds - plenty of awesome, solemn starshines there should be. Wait, I wanna say caution, please not be safe and sound here. :-)

Ebb is a short track, that is the entrance of the next song I suggest. Masaki's powerless and repetitive whispers and around them calm, transparent synth sounds - should notify you what would happen at the next moment. And in Benthos, the key DRUG of his second album, spacey and floating bashes in Masaki's inner light. Repetition of speedy synth kicks or bell hits, shots of noises sometimes attacking to you, sounds like signaling in Morse Code - all are constructing his spacey space. For you, indeed, listening hard to this song over 14 minute may be boring but I feel it's just fit for your lullaby to the dreamful space.

Okay for you to define the songs from track 7 to 9 as a story I consider. Kikaokubeshi, only 2 minute track, is not a song but exactly a collection of sounds from the lake under the inferno, with cries of a crow and feeble shouts of a dead man. I wonder if the sounds from a distance be religious bells for the dead. This track is the opening one of his second album. How do you feel if you hear such a terrible soundscape - I guess evidently on purpose he should draw you into his spiritual underground. Magakami is a funeral march made by Masaki - maybe for the pitiful dead previously mentioned - with low-toned hits of a bulky percussion, blows of a bugle, and voices reading a sutra. Weird but solemn atmosphere is around you and soon the march should go to the next stage, where the dead body is held up to the heaven. There, the sound into a trance and toward the heaven you can get, and at the same time you can join the funeral ritual together in the song. And let's go to Death Star. Here are a lot of awful and uncomfortable noises in the first half and keen, sharp-edged keyboard sounds throwing you to despair. However, just the moment the song is finished, you can come to your senses, as if you come out from a madness or a trance. What damn happened?

Tuchigumo, one of songs in his first solo work, has a flavour like the opening part of Overture by GHOST. With various percussive stuffs, strings or horns, he might squeeze his sound world out of his bound mind. He might have profound knowledge about temples, religious structures, and Buddhist stuffs because he was born in Kyoto, a Buddhist town in Japan. Also the next A Ghost From The Darkened Sea, full of religious sound structures and scattered synth puzzles with Buddhist flavour, is exactly his footprint on the rock scene. The last sound of ripple might mean the end of the life...?

Fly into the faraway sky - sink into the dark sea.