Cosmos Factory
An Old Castle Of Transylvania

The musical shore that no one paid attention to. At least in Italy, where in 1973 many people didn’t even know exactly where Japan was. It was a distant place, one of many. There was no Internet with its free low-cost information, not everyone had a television, not everyone even thought about enrolling in university, and illiteracy hadn’t yet been eradicated. Cultural exchanges between the East and the Overst have always existed but only during that period did they start to become explicit and known to ordinary people; if you weren't the Beatles or Led Zeppelin (or Deep Purple, obviously), you rarely had the chance to be listened to across different time zones. We had to wait for Michael Jackson's "Thriller" to see a "Western" album sell more than a million copies on the other side of the globe. There were still slices of the world living in villages. In one of these, Japan, J-Rock began to establish itself thanks to artists who were inspired by great Western idols and explored new sonic paths by mixing elements of their own musical tradition with those of the models they drew inspiration from.

The Cosmos Factory, a band from Nagoya named after an album by Creedence Clearwater Revival, released almost forty years ago a debut album offering a psychedelic ProgRock blend of artists like Pink Floyd, Vanilla Fudge, and Iron Butterfly, with all the typical elements of the genre: electric guitar now howling and bold, now rough and dry, bass, drum focusing on cymbals, omnipresent keyboard, piano, Hammond organ, Mellotron, violin. The music proposed by keyboardist Tsutomu Izumi and the band is as dark as the image chosen for the album title, the parts are clearly two: the first more melodic opens with the instrumental "Soundtrack 1984" introduced by acid bass beats supported by keyboards upon which the electric guitar soon begins to have fun and closes with another instrumental piece, "Poltergeist," in 7/4. In between the two, Hirashi Mizutani's vibrant guitar evolutions are heard here and there in the catchy "Maybe" and the rougher "Fantastic Mirror", while the atmosphere becomes lighter during the slow ballad "Soft Focus."

The second part is dedicated to the suite that gives the album its title, "An Old Castle of Transylvania", divided into four parts for a total duration of about twenty minutes: "Forest Of The Death", also instrumental, takes an eternity to take off but then over the distance it makes itself heard with the duet between Hammond and drums and the guitar sneaking in wherever it can, "The Cursed" is crepuscular and dreamy, the singing is sweet and sorrowful, "Darkness Of The World" even though being a more breezy composition, features a weeping tone in Izumi's singing, as if it were a memory to be thrown to the wind, and keyboards and Hammond always there to provide a backdrop to also introduce the concluding "An Old Castle Of Transylvania", the piece that gives the name to the suite that gives the name to the album (the Cosmos Factory doesn’t exactly shine for creativity).

The album thus closes, with a summary of what has been heard in the previous minutes leaving the impression that even if you don’t understand a blessed word of the lyrics (for those who don’t know Japanese, of course), the dark and dramatic sensations that the Cosmos Factory wanted to convey arrive strong and sharp like arrows. The group’s career will continue throughout the decade, however, this debut will remain their most representative album.