Up-Tight & Makoto Kawabata (Galactic Zoo Discs)

Up-Tight are a Japanese trio who keep one foot within the post-Velvet Underground / Spacemen 3 axis of sunglasses-after-dark narcotic drone-rock, and the other firmly planted in the whacked out hinterland of amplifier worship, FX overload and extreme volume favoured by such fellow countrymen as High Rise, Mainliner, Boris, LSD March et al. Makoto Kawabata is Makoto Kawabata, and long may he remain so. And together they have created... well I guess I don’t really have to tell you what a humungous blow-out of formless, mind-raping cosmic goo this album’s 6 tracks and 75-odd minutes add up to, right?

Kawabata is all over the shop in terms of both playing and production, burying the bare bones of Up-Tight’s already maxed out feedback trance-rock under a gratuitous additional serving of his patented motor-psycho guitar, fuzz-drone and UFO space echo, as also heard on every Acid Mother’s Temple record ever. In places it sounds as if he’s on a quest to obliterate the poor band and turn this into a solo noise album through sheer force of will – a feat of which this unstoppable psychedelic warlord is more than capable, so it’s an act of mercy when he eases off to let Up-Tight make their presence felt, resulting in the album’s best moments.

‘Where Does She Go?’ begins with menacing sub-bass, some freaked out distant fluting reminiscent of the heralds of Lovecraft’s Outer Gods and a desperate, echoing vocal chant that sounds like one of Damo Suzuki’s deepest trips into the void, building up via sinister modal guitar and an insistent ‘Venus in Furs’ beat into a stunning piece of pitch black psychedelia before being righteously obliterated within Makoto’s ever-rising wall of pink noise fury. It’s an awe-inspiring track, recalling some of the more cultish and hairy denizens of the original Krautrock fraternity powered through the kind of amp stacks and esoteric rack-mounted shit you’d imagine they probably needed a crane to get into the studio, pushing a level of overload that seriously fucks with the speakers on my cheap hi-fi, regardless of volume.

This segues straight into the other highlight, ‘Born to Fly’, a fast-paced, heavy rocking juggernaut of a Hawkwind tribute that sees the two guitarists circling each other like X-Wings, trading thrilling blasts of post-Hendrix fire and post-Agata insanity before coalescing into a spiralling narwhale horn of skronk rising above the sea of noise... it’s the speed demon motorik epic Comets on Fire have never had the guts to make and, man, you’d better believe it ROCKS.

Unfortunately though, song structure is the inevitable victim of all this carnage, with even the rudimentary pounding of Up-Tight’s rhythm section getting swiftly lost within a sea of pure stoner sludge, the drummer too often resorting to some half-hearted cymbal swishing and the bass lost entirely beneath the waves of feedback. By the end of each track the noise is thick, malevolent, egoless, jaw-dropping... but for Up-Tight to have just kicked back into a crushing Iommi riff or a Sleep-style thunder groove at the right moment – man, that would have really pushed it over the edge!

But they don’t – they just let it slide, and let the noise machines do their work. There’s nothing going on here that those familiar with the Japanese underground won’t have heard many times before, but hungry fans of AMT, Mainliner’s ‘Mellow Out’ and Boris’s original druggy blueprint are still pointed this way for an impressive new mountain of the chaos they know and love.

Normal people on the other hand are advised that this is rather akin to spending an hour wading through a dark lake of psychoactive alien death treacle, and caution is very much advised.

(Also worthy of a mention in the album’s favour is the totally neat VU and Nico parody cover, and the fact that this is released on the record label of psychedelic true believer and Galactic Zoo Dossier main man, Mr Plastic Crimewave, who is very much deserving of some of your money.)