Back in the 90s and early 2000s a spiraling, almost endless blast of cassettes (and videos, CDr boxsets) issued forth from Japan in (mostly) black and white sleeves, dubbed onto blank cassettes in tinted cases. Nanjo Asahito (High Rise, Mainliner, Toho Sara and a million more) documented his own history and the Japanese underground with an avalanche of releases on his La Music Records label. Dozens of releases from Nanjo's projects and others in his universe painted a weird ass picture of the deepest pool of psych in the world at the time. My fave among the handful of cassettes I have heard is almost too good to be true.
Leningrad Psychedelic Blues Machine was a meeting of hard psych weirdos Leningrad Blues Machine's Tabata Mara with Nanjo and Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple, Mainliner and Toho Sara. They are joined by my favorite of Acid Mothers Temple's many drummers, Koizumi Hajime. And this meeting of the burnt psych spirit decided to take on the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star!" Fuzzed out bass notes keep the Dead's riff rolling for most of the 20 or so minutes while Kawabata taps into the mystical jazz of the Garcia archetype jam, sending shooting star notes into the black fog of Nanjo's rumble.
As far as I know this is the only release from this group and it was recorded in 1995. It carries the La Musica catalog number of LA-054). Nanjo seems to have dropped of the face of the earth the last few years; it is difficult to find any mention of his La Musica label on the internet (much less a discography). Kawabata has kept on truckin' with Acid Mothers Temple (Koizumi joins him in AMT on occasion) and plays with Tabata in the Cosmic Inferno version of Acid Mothers Temple.
Leningrad Psychedelic Blues Machine- Dark Star from Dark Star (La Musica cassette, LA-054)
Yes, it's true that Nanjo pretty much dropped out of sight. He to some extent burned a few too many people, and last I heard had moved out of Tokyo. Not sure what he's doing now. He had been running a video rental shop in Tokyo, but now...who knows?
ReplyDeleteHave you heard the Holy Angels tape from La Musica? Amazing stuff, and of course the Musica Transonic from Eye from the Boredoms is pretty special. Nanjo released a lot of great stuff; he just didn't always ask people first...
hi mason!
ReplyDeletefunny you mention the Holy Angels, i have one cassette by them, "Holy Trip." Besides the Leningrad Psych Blues Machine cassette, it is my fave of the handful of La Musica tapes i own. i plan on doing a future post on "Holy Trip" at some point. i do have the Musica with Eye one as well, very neat stuff, and it actually lives up to the billing.
i have heard of nanjo burning people left and right and after being so prolific, he really has gone silent. i hope the best for him, of course, since he did so much to document that whole scene and beyond.
take care
andyp
hey .. it seems like u forgott to leave a link to this thing .
ReplyDeleteIm not hear to read about music u know ..
/ metek
hey anonymous, the link to the audio works fine.
ReplyDeletein the original post click on the "Dark Star" after "Blues Machine-"
the one in quotes like below:
Leningrad Psychedelic Blues Machine- "Dark Star" from Dark Star (La Musica cassette, LA-054)
But I am not here to show you how to use the internet.
alrite . sorry for whining
ReplyDelete