OMOIDE HATOBA

Really impressive is this album itself, full of complicated rhythm warps and edged melody turns. Extravagant instrumental (sometimes non-instrumental) hotchpotch can be heard like a repertoire upon their one-man theater. Especially in the third track "Ohayo / Smile / Fire Man" their strictly harmonized play under such a complex rhythm confusion is flowing out. Some amazing phrases can be felt indeed, but pity there are not so many moments we can get surprised and stroke directly. Matured experiments or polished progressive rock, we could call this album so ... yes their unpredictable premature beats on stage should be our pleasure methinks, and such an accidental spark of sound cannot be heard in studio-recorded creations. The last track "Higan" or "Out Rockers On Your Angel Hair" notifies the audience that they would have found another hope of music along with Neu!-ish convoluted improvisational tune structure. Afraid the reminiscence be over.

You can notice easily that this album flooded with "music mess" - weird synthesizer sounds, crooked drumming, tape- effected voices, along with bizarre soundscape - cannot be classified under any subgenre ... simple minimalistic rhythm and melody lines like Totsuzen Danball, tribal ethnicity with meaningless words, deep heavy riffs like King Crimson, experimental monotony plus tape effects like Neu!, acid-folksy sound traveler, explosive noises like Hanatarash (one of Seiichi's previous projects), or catchy poppy outcome ... their musical basis might be quite massive, and historically important veins must be messed with flashy sound crooks launched by Seiichi and Atsushi - the big two of OMOIDE HATOBA.

And their lyrics are pretty impressive at the same time. Their words mainly sung in Japanese should be smeared with full of cynics, laziness, disappointment and desperation against the current society and human life. Looks like "Kinsei", Venus in English, means that they might want to rush or fly away from the earth into the universe. Via this album we cannot find any cool phrase nor pleasant melody line but just only criticism and hopelessness solidified with lyrics and composition. However we cannot get depressed but chuckle along their comical atmosphere. What a mystery, what a cynical hysterie tour.

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.

I remember playing this on the stereo whilst visiting my folks - freaking out my mother in a way that had her reaching for the phone to call the doctors. This Japanese act is one of the most unique and crazy I've come across in recent times, and putting this album on right now makes me think of how far I've actually ventured into the more out there progressive lands, since I first started out listening to the likes of Pink Floyd and Genesis. I still love both, don't get me wrong, but had I been handed Mantako during my prog infancy, I'd most likely have laughed my ass off and consequently forgotten all about it...

This album is madness incarnate. It tries so many things all at once, and if you've ever encountered the craziness of the Japanese - be that in those mad television shows or just through a mate of yours, then you probably know what I'm talking about. Mantako is at the very heart of this bizarre humour, it reaches its arms up towards the sky and instantly looses the straitjacket. Nothing is held back - everything comes in one big gulp with play doh figurines, marmalade thongs and exploding grand mothers.

There is a certain (and here I am certainly choosing my words carefully) technique? Erm method? Man I really don't know, but what I'm trying to say, is that not unlike David Bowie did with his famous lyrical cut-up approach, these guys transcribe onto their music a series of twisted and colourful sonic motifs. It's like cutting and pasting all these wild and frantic ideas onto whatever platform they've rolled out, - and then suddenly this highly original style of theirs comes into fruition - and Bob's your uncle - and grannies do fly.

How to describe the music hhmmm? Post punk aggression mixed with Hawaiian slide guitars. Star Trek beetle electronics creeping around in ecstasy. Mattress springs used in a melodic sense. Psychedelic cowboys and Indians related western soundtrack with big bursts of flaming lunacy.

It is almost impossible to convey how this album sounds without coming off sounding glib and completely insane. The first time I heard this, I had this overpowering imagery flashing of standing in some sort of preschool for musical prodigies, but on this particular day the children had dropped acid and subsequently attacked every instrument in sight with the finesse of a drunken bar-brawl. Plastic flutes being spat in, guitars getting ripped to shreds, moog synthesizers played with chopsticks, percussive contraptions flung furiously into small cages with rodents in, jew harps and tribal drumming - all of this decorated with the occasional Cherokee war chantings, mad screaming and finally my absolute favourite: the insane prairie hyena vocals.

Now if you thought Naked City had perfected the slice and dice method of throwing everything under the sun into small musical segments spanning from Batman revamped to metallic insanity, then hold your horses, pull granny down from the clouds and have a listen to this eclectic(HA!) Japanese act. Although Omoide Hatoba started out as the brainchild of former Boredoms guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto, the sound is still completely original and will have you reaching for your fleeting braincells in times of serrated insanity Hawaiian Cherokee toddler kitchen salvation soundtrack madness.

Leave it up to the Japanese to make an album like this, and leave it up to people with Monty Pythonesque humour, webbed feet, ears of soy and an open attitude towards music that is far away from the mundane and mainstream. Far far away. Leave it up to those few to enjoy this record. I personally love it like I love orchestrated chaos - talking to fish - telling kids stories of perilous space journeys on kangaroos and how I got the middle name Ford Anchovy. Why then? Because the older I get, the more insane the world around me feels, and devoting myself to nonsensical things like music without manners and direction sometimes makes for the best of parallels in a world of war and famine.

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!