Black Editions are going great guns at the moment in re-issuing long out-of-print Japanese delicacies — and this trio of discs here are doubtless playing into Nanjo Asahito‘s retirement fund. There’s a bit of a cultish collectorism about a lot of Japanese psych (certainly the record prices bear that out) but, annoyingly, the records are often outstanding. The Shizuka re-issue from 2023 is absolutely one of the best unknown-to-me reissues of the last forever. And these three — well…
Nanjo Asahito – Inner Beast
Familiarity with Asahito probably won’t prepare you for this record. I wouldn’t say it’s unlike any music ever heard by humans, but given that Asahito is pretty well known for his engineer-baiting all-in-the-red approach to sound, this is practically silence.
What it is is a collection of simple songs — typically with minimal overdubs, vocals sounding like they’re reverbed in from several streets away. You could plot a continuity there in that these are not what you’d consider proper recording techniques.
The music itself is a kind of proto-slowcore with lo-fi leanings — solo guitar / vocals / occasional overlaid twinkles. Everything is slow and distant and ineffably sad. Like a lot of Japanese underground stuff emerging from the late-’70s / early-’80s (say, the post-Abe / Takayanagi players) it sounds very much like they didn’t know how to make US style psych ‘properly’, so their improper is a world of its own. Reverb is not tasteful. Recording fidelity is minimal. I’m reminded of the story of Phil Ashtray Navigations saying that he wanted to emulate the records he was hearing, but the records he was hearing were dubs-of-dubs that carried with them all the murk of lo-fi copies. Hence AshNav sound like that.Probably the record this reminds me of most is Keiji Haino‘s Affection (the quieter bits at least), but Haino has a kind of restlessness that’s absolutely vertiginous and overwrought — Asahito’s is more demure and placid. He’s OK with a two-chord vamp going on for a while (opener “Inner Beast” and closer “Eucharist”) and there’s no real impetus to jump into the listener’s consciousness. Given a blind test there’s no way I’d recognise it as Asahito; moreover it’s so rare (until this reissue) that I can’t imagine anyone knowing he could play like this.
A gorgeous subtle addition to a not-at-all-subtle discography.Musica Transonic + Mainliner – Solid Static
Following on is Solid Static, exactly the kind of business that Asahito is known for (though perhaps a little bit shy of the overload of High Rise). Band make-up is Nanjo Asahito (bass), Kawabata Makoto (guitar) and Yoshida Tatsuya (drums). Asahito’s bass sounds well overloaded — fuzzed up to a ridiculous level. Makoto’s guitar is perhaps less ostentatious all up in your shit relative to the Acid Mothers Temple standard.
This is probably slightly before the psych revival happened properly — mid-’90s, when I’m pretty sure psych was the least cool thing. It shows in the music — it’s a lot of fun and was presumably not too successful at the time, making for a proper unheard of classic.
Tatsuya’s drumming is absolutely revelatory — tight as a gnat’s chaff, expansive as the shore of an archipelago. A shame he always turned towards the noise rock / heavy psych side of things and not something funkier or Krautrock-ier. FWIW I know AMT typically mix their drums way down low and the focus is more on the Hawkwind-y high-end whorl, but hearing Makoto against a properly hard rhythm is great. I’m aware that Tatsuya’s played in AMT — my suspicion is that this record is a collaboration, while AMT has a different idea of what mixing means.Something that happens in ‘underground’ music (used very broadly) is that coming from different territories to the Anglo world makes for some unusual approaches — this is probably closer to the world of Plastic People Of The Universe and Les Rallizes Dénudés than it is to your better-known Western bands. If no-one’s listening, there’s no reason you can’t scream from a straight-up ripper (“Solid Static”) into something closer to up-tempo Captain Beefheart-meets-Jandek (“Topsy Turvy”).
I want to put something about “Rot Way” sounding in part like a big beat rhythm, but I haven’t got much to add to it. I’d say also this record is definitely a safe space for noodling, which again, probably isn’t that hip in the mid-’90s. If it ever was. There’s also more than a soupcon of free rock business happening (the ending of “Rot Way”). It’s a hefty and a hectic record — I don’t think two tracks quite plough the same furrow. Asahito’s bass owes a lot to the ranted bass of Les Rallizes Dénudés throughout, but the parts are tighter to the choppy rhythms — rather than simple crutches to the overloaded guitar.If you know Asahito this record won’t come as a shock but if you’ve ever found Makoto’s approach to mixing frustrating, this is a great record for actually hearing him play without all the windswept business. Tatsuya is hopefully well known to fans of heavy drumming. Do you need another heavy psych record? I mean, yeah, probably. This is about as good as they come in the ‘not-Fushitsusha‘ tier.
Ohkami no Jikan – Black Tape II
I guess this sits between the two releases in terms of the energy. You can recognise it as Asahito — there’s definitely that Mizutani-level skin-flaying distortion on a couple of solos (see opener “Dwarf”). The tempos are more chill though — possibly also more groovy.
There’s a raft of swing (“Thin City”) and less of a sense of ramping intensity here. Maybe this is the record closest to Shizuka / Les Rallizes Dénudés — “Inner Beast” (a title Asahito clearly re-used or a song re-interpreted such that both versions are radically different?) touches on a kind of blissful ’60s psych pop through a wind tunnel vibe.
I’m suspecting that this is probably the Goldilocks record of the three in terms of putting on in the background of polite company — not disappearing into the void like M, not ratcheted tighter than the sun like Solid Static. I always come back and forth with these things as to whether it’s worth mentioning The Velvet Underground, but this record is pretty close to the vibe of VU when they were downlow. Think third album. More opiated than speed-addled, gesturing towards a transparent pop arrangement that Lou Reed would flesh out in his solo career. Black Tape II has the same pedigree — it knows what a melody is, understands how to push out something mid-tempo, but has just enough scree to keep it off the radio.For my money it’s M that’s the pick of the three records here, but they’re all great examples of how Asahito knows how to put a banger together and also how to piss off audiophiles. And thanks to Black Editions, I can be less pissed off because these bangers are available at not-extortionate rates again. Huzzah for Black Editions.
-Kev Nickells-
