Japanese Progressive Rock presented by DamoX

Hi, honganji-san, thanks for your serious kicks (comments).

Yea, I've not heard Space Circus or Lalena ... soon gonna check'em yay!


EDIT: Fixed the spelling of "Lalena".


Edited by DamoXt7942 - July 09 2010 at 08:12

b_olariu wrote: Tanks Damo for your kind words, I'm waiting to see this band added soon. Glad to help , but where will be in eclectic zone or jazz fusion?????

Guess they can be fit for Eclectic ...
If you have mp3 samples (not mp4 video ones), you can recommend to Eclectic or JRF Team, with my STRONG support!

b_olariu wrote: ok, I will make from my CD the mp3 files and give to eclectic team.

Thanks OOKINI!

Another pioneer of Japanese Psychedelic Progressive Rock world.


WHITE HEAVEN (from the inner sleeve of "Out")

The roots of WHITE HEAVEN lay in a Japanese psychedelic rock outfit named Living End formed around the frontman You ISHIHARA (guitar, voices), in the early 1980s. The founding members were You, Ken MATSUTANI (guitar), Ken ISHIHARA (drums), Tetsuya SAKAMOTO (guitar), and Takayuki NAKAGOSHI (bass). Matsutani left in the following year for forming his own band MARBLE SHEEP (AND THE RUNDOWN SUN'S CHILDREN) and Michio KURIHARA (guitar) - a guitarist who could give psychedelic starshine to WHITE HEAVEN - took his place.

Through playing lots of gigs at Yaneura or Koenji in Tokyo, and changing some members without changing music style, WHITE HEAVEN released their debut album 'Out' in 1991 (only 500 vinyl copies), that could highly appreciated all around the world and had been traded at an extremely high price till the reissued CD came out in 1995. Out of Japan, they could be taken up in a special article by an English psychedelic rock magazine 'Ptolemaic Terrascope'. Though they released albums actively - 'Strange Bedfellow' (1993), 'Next To Nothing' (1994), and 'Levitation' (1997), WHITE HEAVEN were disbanded in September 1997 suddenly after their last Osakan tour.

You ISHIHARA, through playing in his following band THE STARS, is currently active for producing a Japanese psychedelic outfit YURA YURA TEIKOKU.


Out (1991) - WHITE HEAVEN, a dawn of Japanese psychedelia

Listen, and enter into such a pungent guitar battle between Michio and You.

How 'bout that! We will unintentionally shout like that. The first track "Blind Promise" knocks us crudely with Michio's loud and perverse guitar solo. You's voices are a bit lackadaisical for encouraging their soundscape but we can be immersed into his passion and effort to sing loudly. Suggest lots of Japanese psychedelic rock artists should try to head forward this song ... such an importance we can feel directly from the sounds full of originality, not close to Rallizes nor to another loud psychedelic band like High Rise or Kousokuya. All-English lyrics can notify us that they should try to make a big success all over the world from the very beginning.

Basically their melody line was based upon psychedelic pop scene, including a drone ballad like "Dull Hands" or "Fallin' Stars End" (You's voices get cheesier especially in them, slow ballads) and a rough boogie like "My Cold Dimension", but trust me they can show themselves at their best in the longest, most apathetic, most terrorised track "Mandrax Town". Guess You should be like a dog that bite a thick bone as a vocalist (sorry!) and all instruments and the controllers could act like warriors in a war, art of war. And the last "Out", the masterpiece in this album, is very graceful and pathetic psychedelia ... an attractive dessert after a psych dinner.

As a Psychedelic Progressive Rock Specialist Team member, and as a Japanese Psychedelic Progressive Rock Researcher, I cannot avoid recommending this terrific album to you.


Thank you for reading this blog.

Oh yeah, now grant SaltyJon's request.
Let me introduce another Tatsuya & Makoto's project ... MUSICA TRANSONIC!


Asahito NANJOH (Musica Transonic, High Rise)

Asahito's sudden request could construct a temporary premier psychedelic project.

MUSICA TRANSONIC were formed by three ardent, impressing individualities under Japanese psychedelic rock scene - Asahito NANJOH (bass; ex-High Rise), Makoto KAWABATA (guitar; ex-Acid Mothers Temple), and Tatsuya YOSHIDA (drums; ex-Ruins) - as an improvised, free-styled psychedelic progressive rock outfit in 1995. They have very unique style that each player produces heavy, loud, confusing psychedelia based on simple riffs with insistence on musical attitude and with support of the others, simultaneously.

MUSICA TRANSONIC released six albums for five years, sometimes in collaboration with Kenji Haino (voices; ex-Fush*tsusha).


Musica Transonic (self-titled) (1995) - MUSICA TRANSONIC

You can imagine how pleasantly they should be playing together in this album.

As if we can see their delightful faces and appearances. From the very beginning, we can be shocked and immersed by their extremely loud attacks via their psychedelic launcher. Completely improvised ensemble with remarkably simple riffs of tremendous scattered noises and music notes, they can throw into our brain mercilessly from start to finish. Indeed cannot understand obviously what they emphasize with their free-formed instrumental explosions, but I do consider it's no bad to feel their magnificent skills and talents, and especially much power for them to enjoy playing. All of them - Tatsuya's flexible and impressing drumming, Speed Guru's firing guitar solo, and ... let me make the assertion ... Asahito's seriously strict bass solo without any blurring. Asahito has entirely supported his own band High Rise's play and style, and he can let us know how his bass play should be aggressive, extreme, crazy, and hedonistic. :-P

Whatever everyone says, here is the most loudly aggressive psychedelia by three eccentricities and egocentricities. Psychedelic Progressive Rock freaks' must.


Thank you for reading this blog.

Sadly I've only heard but one Japanese band, Acid Mothers Temple.  But they know how to rock 

The Truth wrote: Sadly I've only heard but one Japanese band, Acid Mothers Temple.  But they know how to rock

Thanks, Phil Collins (Not really) ... oh, what an avantgarde naming!
Anyway, which album have you heard?
My recommendation is their second "Pataphisical Freak Out MU!!".

A Person wrote: Musica Transonic sounds like it is right up my alley.

I've listened to their debut shot only yet, but can easily imagine each one should have just the same earachy sounds as the first.

The following work of MUSICA TRANSONIC - А Πιλγριμδ Σολαχε (1996) - is a bit more polished.



Just like the previous 'exploded' confession by three loudspeakers, MUSICA TRANSONIC has come back to us with a bulky mass of improvised loudness. Needless to say, neither pretensions nor modesty in them and their second work А Πιλγριμδ Σολαχε, but uniquely we can find some more 'refinement' in it than their debut one. Exactly there was some improvement on their recording quality (not intentionally?), but I guess, one of more important point is that they could have something united or arranged well upon this work.


А Πιλγριμδ Σολαχε (1996) - MUSICA TRANSONIC

Listen to the first track, and this can remind us the middle part of 21st Century Schizoid Man - some battles among Fripp's guitar and Greg & Micheal's rhythm section - you know? Basically they played impromptu and freely, but we can feel some stability in them, despite of a certain crazy loudness in their debut. Without any suspicion, Makoto's guitar can be very loud and aggressive, with such noises like peep-peep-shoot-shoot, and Tatsuya's drumming can also be flexible and intentionally scattered, like some arrhythmia in a dancing heart. Let me insist upon this -  Asahito's bass solo has very steady potential energy, supporting the other instruments and players entirely exploded on their own way.

Not only massive attacks, but something folksy and relaxing in such as sixth tracks. Of course, a completely improvised aggression should be in the last one. Japanese loud psychedelia, with colourful variation ... very fascinating album.


Thank you for reading this blog.

Keishiro-san,

You almost make me believe any Japanese music is psychedelic

(0r, in other words, if any music,looking as Japanese, is not psychedelic, it's fake for sure)

So - let's start from Cosmic Psychos Team, and then, if they wouldn't find Takeshi psyche enough, we'll make a next step