World Spirituality Classics # 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda 2xLP 
(Luaka Bop)

You might have been forgiven for thinking that, after Alice Coltrane dropped out of the secular music world to devote the remainder of her life to leading the monastic spiritual community she helped found in Southern California, her subsequent recordings of devotional/meditational music might have taken on somewhat of an, uh, ambient, New Age-y sort of character..?

So I had always assumed at least, but, well, time to get wise folks, because there’s not even the slightest whiff of cheese about the extraordinary, unclassifiable pieces assembled here by Luaka Bop. Compromising dense, over-powering monoliths of ultra-compressed electronic textures, massed voices, bone-rattling hand percussion, occasional tambora drones and gospel/deep soul influenced reiterations of ancient Hindu mantras, this is music that determinedly refuses to ever fade into the background, informed by the same uncompromising approach to composition and arrangement that characterised such challenging discs as ‘Spiritual Unity’ in earlier years.

That each track here begins sounding entirely different from the last, yet swiftly engages us in exactly the same kind of sensuous, head-nodding fugue as its predecessor, is testament to both the power and the range of endless possibilities that Alice managed to channel from her spiritual beliefs back into her music.

Existing outside of any of the expected sonic clichés, these are evocations of a terrifying, beatific godhead that has no connection whatsoever to either the Cathedral-reverbed reverence of Western devotion or the mellow, cloud-dwelling man-god of post-hippie Californian spirituality. As with all of Alice Coltrane’s best work, this music feels like peeking through the gold-flecked bead curtain into the cyclopean throne room of a divinity who radiates such love it can crush you like an ant. An endless, throbbing kaleidoscope of sound crushed down to cassette-sized doses of pupil-dilating oblivion, it’s… quite the thing.

I dread to think what ‘World Sprituality Classics # 2’ is liable to consist of, but this is certainly one hell of a good start.


Tokyo Flashback PSF ~ Psychedelic Speed Freaks! ~ 2xCD (PSF)

The death of Hideo Ikeezumi, founder of the PSF record shop and label, at the start of 2017 came as sad news indeed for anyone familiar with the exquisite mixture of maximalist psychedelic rock and borderless free sound that his label became a by-word for through its glory-days in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. Hitting shelves in seemingly record time after Ikeezumi’s passing, this double CD tribute/fundraiser compilation of unreleased material from acts associated with the label serves as a testament to the strength of the legacy PSF leaves behind, effortlessly transcending the limited expectations that such a rushed, odds-and-sods sort of effort would normally command.

Of course, hearing newly disinterred cuts from core PSF groups like High Rise, White Heaven, Fushitsusha and Overhang Party is worth the entry price alone (the latter in particular provide an awesome re-working of their classic track from the second ‘Tokyo Flashback’ comp, now pleasingly retitled for English-speakers as ‘Now Appearing! Naked Existence’), but, as was often the case with this label, it’s the more unusual, less rock-orientated stuff creeping in around the edges that often proves most beguiling; terrifying, Lynchian noir improv from .es, angst-drenched Korean psych-folk from Kim Doo Soo, minimalist industrial desolation from Reizen, beautifully gentle, heart-felt free-playing from Niseaporia, and the set even ends, poignantly I’m sure, with a Bach violin sonata rearranged for solo guitar by Hideaki Kondo.

All of these cuts are by turns furious, challenging, lyrical and enchanting, opening our eyes to rarely glimpsed corners of a relentlessly creative musical underground that continues to thrive in Japan and Far-East, much akin I’d imagine to the experience Western listeners brave enough to pick up those first imported ‘Tokyo Flashback’ comps must have enjoyed when they first appeared back in the ‘90s.

I’m not sure how widely available this new comp is outside of Japan, but it is accompanied by a lovely bilingual booklet, so distribution to English–speaking territories was presumably an intention, assuming any overseas distributors could be persuaded that anyone would still be willing to buy CDs. Anyway, should you see it on sale anywhere, please don’t hesitate to prove these hypothetical distributors wrong by snapping it up, it’s extremely worthwhile.

(It’s worth giving a shout-out at this point to the U.S.-based imprint The Black Editions, who have recently embarked on a programme of reissuing the PSF label’s key releases on vinyl for the first time. I don’t actually have their re-release of the first ‘Tokyo Flashback’ comp in my hands yet, but their noble efforts certainly threaten to do a great deal of damage to both my ears and bank balance in 2018.)


Coil – Time Machines 2xLP (Dais)

Whilst I of course respect the unique aesthetic they created around themselves, and their pivotal role in the wider UK 80s/90s underground, I must confess the music of Coil has never really been my cup of psilocybin-laced tea… however, there are few things I enjoy more in life than a fucking good drone, so I can definitely make an exception for this project, which was created by the core Coil duo in collaboration with Drew McDowell, and originally issued in 1998 solely under the name ‘Time Machines’.

And, make no mistake, this is some hardcore drone going on right here. When initially dropping the needle, first time listeners may be irked by the idea that they’ve just paid top dollar for some blank oscillator tones, but their tune will soon change as things progress and the full weight of these pieces makes itself felt.

Though this is utilitarian music, created primarily to aid meditation and ritual, like the Alice Coltrane record discussed above, it is about as far away from ‘background’ music as it is possible to get, instead setting out to capture your ‘foreground’ with the relentless determination of a swarming nanobot army.

This is music designed to completely transform the atmosphere of the environment in which it is played. Each of the record’s four sides is named after a psychotropic chemical compound, and the Coil boys seem to have done their damnedest to actually try to create a corresponding physiological change in their listeners through the sound of each piece.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say they succeed, but they certainly got pretty close. Play this record at appropriate volume, and work or writing becomes impossible. Your concentration will disintegrate, your attention will drift from the screen/desk to some blank area on the wall. Your mind will eventually start to empty, as if someone pulled the plug, and Coil’s stated intention of creating “tones to facilitate travel through time” will start to sound a lot less fanciful. Then, about ten or twelve minutes in, when you’re sufficiently monged, they’ll suddenly twist a knob and drop the kind of bass frequency that will make you cack yourself wondering if a passenger jet is about to fall out of the sky above your house. The bastards.

Needless to say, in contrast to the vast majority of ‘drone’ records I own, this is not something to be thrown on casually, for a bit of relaxation before bed time. If you want to get down with ‘Time Machines’, you’d better cross your legs on the floor, fire up the incense, dim the lights - go whole hog with it and let’s see if we can’t make that clock start to go backwards.


Midori Takada – Through The Looking Glass LP 
(We Release Whatever the Fuck We Want)

Taking a somewhat more personable approach to the art of the drone, this until recently highly sought after disc sees minimal/ambient composer Midori Takada doing her utmost to bypass human thought patterns and instead replicate the ebb and flow of natural sound, utilising an intriguing palette of African and Asian percussion, pump organ, coca-cola bottles, bells and a recorder, along with what appear to be some interesting and unconventional recording/over-dubbing techniques. The results are extremely compelling – so much so that it feels almost crass to waste time trying to convey an impression of them in words. Let’s just say that ‘Through The Looking Glass’ feels like one of those masterworks of quietly unassailable beauty that is likely to just get better and better the more we play it through the remainder of our lives.

Suffice to say, both ‘Mr Henri Rousseau’s Dream’ on the A-side and relatively brief ‘Trompe l’oeil’ on the B are amongst my most-played tracks of the year - absolutely delightful vistas of nocturnal faux-forest ambience, guaranteed to promote relaxed breathing and a general sense of well-being just as surely as the aforementioned Coil record is to fuck with your head. Absolutely delightful stuff, even as the somewhat more baleful ‘Catastrophe’ proceeds to drag us into unsettling realms of pulsating, rhythmic unease.

This record’s extraordinary cover art – by Yohko Ochida – is also worth a mention. Click on the picture above to enlarge and spend some time looking at it. You will be a happier person as a result.


Maki Asakawa – s/t 2xLP (Honest Jons)

One of those “if she didn’t exist, they’d have had to invent her” type figures, Maki Asakawa’s appearance in the assortment of gorgeously reproduced monochrome photographs accompanying this compilation of her early recordings speaks for itself. Swathed from head to toe in black, with neat bangs, heaviest-possible-eyelashes and an ever-present, unfiltered cigarette, she is perhaps most-easily characterised as the Japanese New Wave’s characteristically studied take on an ‘avant-chanteuse’ archetype, perhaps pitched somewhere between Juliet Greco, Anna Karina and Nico, I suppose.

Originally a native of Iskikawa prefecture in Northern Japan, Asakawa’s devotion to the sound of American jazz/blues singers (Billie Holiday in particular) led her to begin performing in Tokyo and Yokahama cabaret clubs, where she soon fell under the wing of avant-garde film and theatre director Shuji Terayama (I mean, of course she did), subsequently picking up a record contract, a formidable reputation a s a live performer and a devoted following amongst Japan’s internationally-minded, left wing student movement in short order.

Truth be told, those anticipating hair-raising avant hi-jinks from Asakwawa’s music will be initially disappointed by the fact that the majority of the recordings presented here remain fairly conventional. For the most part, these are nice songs (a mixture of Terayama compositions, American folk/blues standards reworked for the Japanese language and some Asakawa originals) with strong melodies and pleasant, minimal arrangements, anchored by Asakawa’s defiant and heart-felt delivery, which, though never as gravelly or tormented as her blues idols, nonetheless sits within an unusually low register for a Japanese female vocalist of her era.

Though it would be easy for a casual listener to mistake these tunes for prime examples of enka (the oft-wonderful genre of melancholic, folk-derived pop ballads that dominated the Japanese charts through the ‘60s and ‘70s), in fact Asakawa’s fans and musical collaborators saw her at the time as standing very much in opposition to enka orthodoxy, rejecting the overwrought arrangements, melodramatic sentiments and implicit nationalism of the genre in favour of a more stripped back, “authentic”, Western blues/folk-based approach.

Certainly, the shimmering acoustic strumming, gentle fluting, brushed drumming, smouldering cocktail jazz and tasteful rock/soul jamming showcased here make a pleasant change from the squeaky trumpets and stabbing strings of more commercial enka, even as the uniquely sinuous, serpentine melodies of the genre are still very much in evidence, resulting in a rather beguiling hybrid form that undoubtedly proved very influential on later folk-pop performers such as Carmen Maki and Morita Doji.

Whilst these songs are unlikely to blow many minds in the English-speaking world in 21st century, they are nonetheless extremely fine performances – the perfect accompaniment to a glass of single malt enjoyed on a Sunday evening, and nectar of the gods for anyone with a particular yen for the hyper-specific, monochromatic aesthetic of Japan’s late ‘60s cultural new wave – and the rare occasions on Asakawa and her collaborators throw caution to the wind and get way-out-there (such as on the George Harrison-affiliated raga-rock behemoth ‘Govinda’, or the creeped out downer lament of ‘Onna’) are worth the entry price alone.


Emma de Angelis - Forgiveness b/w Trip/Plankton 7” 
(Finders Keepers)

Hey, did you know that, before she went on to pursue a career as a graphic artist, the young sister of Italio-soundtrack legends Guido and Maurizio de Angelis briefly had a bash at following in her brothers’ footsteps? That knowledge was enough to get me to bite on this short but sweet pair of tracks unearthed by Finders Keepers, and, as it transpires, they’re both absolute bangers, show-casing a heavily rock/psychedelia-skewed sound that allowed Ms de Angelis to trespass upon the oft-male-dominated realm of Italian movie/library music with verve, confidence, and, more importantly, wailing fuzz leads and an absolutely bad-ass walking bass-line on ‘Forgiveness’, wheezing synth sirens on ‘Trip’ and a lovely, plaintive folk-ropck-ish melody on ‘Plankton’ . A very enjoyable six minute palette cleanser and no mistake.

Labels: Alice Coltrane, best of 2017, Coil, comps & reissues, Emma de Angelis, Maki Asakawa, Midori Takada, PSF