THE APRYL FOOL

Exactly a Japanese gem, no suspicion one of Japanese Proto-Prog bands.

Forgive me saying so but they were absolutely a lump of delightful pioneers in Japanese progressive rock scene - Hiro YANAGIDA (keyboards; Food Brain, Love Live Life + One), Haruomi HOSONO (bass; Yellow Magic Orchestra), Takashi MATSUMOTO (drums; a very renowned Japanese songwriter), and Eiji KIKUCHI (guitar), Tadashi KOSAKA (voices) - especially the former two players you've already know well, if you are a Japanese progressive rock freak. This APRYL FOOL can be certainly called as a Proto type of EL&P-like Japanese progressive rock outfit methinks.

From the beginning of the first track "Tomorrow's Child", Hiro's warped and whacked organ psychedelia can be fully open! This mellow but a bit sarcastic organ sounds can knock our brain in pieces. Tadashi's voices are enthusiastic but Eiji's fuzzy guitar sounds are more and more (as honestly I say, such a cynical guitar solo I've never listened to in my life) . Suggest all members should try to play paradoxically and decadently, far from childish Jap-pop-rock scene in those days. Next "Another Time" is a simple blues number but much different from easy-listening Japanese blues (as it is said) in late 60s. Guess they might try to push their quirky (but very cool) originality with their best. In "April Blues", all members play a bluesy blues with much pleasure and natural flexibility - not called as a progressive one but a great song.

And their dramatic theatre gets started here ... "The Lost Mother Land (Part I, II)" could be completely psychedelic prophets in Japanese psychedelic progressive rock scene. Weird keyboard plays, eerie voices, a fuzzy and beep guitar solo coming again, rumbling rhythm section, and solemn air around them ... the Japanese psychedelic dawn has already been constructed up by all of their stuffs. The atmosphere gets dreadful like something under inferno especially in Part II. We cannot help feeling terrific progressiveness with this suite. The other blues songs are slightly poppy but amazingly eccentric. With or without intention, they could emphasize their personality with much experimental, progressive ability, and this is the fact currently without any suspicion.

By the way, in their outfit's name APRYL FOOL you may find a misspelling - however, only in my guess though, they might mistake the spelling of "April" intentionally ... for shouting their obvious difference from another poppy rock artist. Interesting incident, you know?

The first Japanese psychedelic blues album I've ever heard. Actually, come to think of it, it's the only Japanese psychedelic blues album I've ever heard. Maybe that's the April Fool's joke? Anyway, to be fair, few of the songs here are really psychedelic-blues tunes; most are one or the other.

There are lots of US and UK musical influences here, from the aptly-named filler "Honky Tonk Jam" reminds me of the hootenanny-styled Beach Boys Party! (1965) as well as Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" (1966). "Apryl Blues" is a faster number, but with much the same atmosphere. The Beatles are evoked most clearly on the far-out psychedelia of "The Lost Mother Land (part 1)" - - unless you count Apryl Fool's name, that is.

If there weren't so many other North American and British groups doing this kind of music in 1969, I can picture Apryl Fool receiving some airplay in the US, perhaps with a song like "Tanger." But it was still just 25 years after World War II. And Japanese auto manufacturers were beginning to erode domestic car sales in the US. And the Vietnam war. And so on. US record-buyers were probably comfortable with their domestic and Western-European choices.

Apryl Fool would've had to have been spectacular to have gotten a fair shake in the holy grail of consumer markets. Among the albums that hit #1 on the Billboard charts in 1969 were The Beatles ("The White Album"), Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Blind Faith, Creedence Clearwater Revival's Green River, Abbey Road, and Led Zeppelin II. Apryl Fool doesn't really compare to any of these in terms of composition, and its production and sound quality were several years behind the times.

Of course, its lack of popularity in the US doesn't mean Apryl Fool isn't a great album. But the band created a work that so plainly reflected contemporary Western rock that it couldn't not be compared with the biggest names of the times. And by that measure it's not a great album. It interprets late-60s Western rock but doesn't add much to it - - in my opinion. I wonder what a follow-up album would've sounded like if they'd consolidated the somewhat radio-friendly approach of "Tanger" and the psychedelic sound of "The Lost Mother Land" (both Part 1 and the even weirder, album-closing Part 2). Plenty of very successful groups had debuts that weren't any better than Apryl Fool - - the Moody Blues, Rush, and Genesis come to mind. Unfortunately, Apryl Fool broke up after just one album. As it happens, the group's members went on to greater things, two of them forming Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Two stars for an interesting, historically important, but unfulfilling album.