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Rating: Being an outsider pays off. Claudio Bisio also said it about Filo Sganga; nobody remembers who the hell you are, and you enjoy the advantages of an outsider. Few of us remember Damo Suzuki, I'm sure. Do you remember Tago Mago by Can? 1971 krautrock yes? I thought for you 1971 would only psychodelically remind you of Meddle by Pink Floyd (they've been brought up in even crazier reviews than this, let me do it too).
Well, this little man from the Land of the Rising Sun, after being picked up off the street by Can while he was most likely tripping on some hallucinatory performance, and having recorded with them 3 albums (and a handful of tracks from another little disc) of unusual beauty, decides he couldn't give a damn about music. Therefore he disappears from the psychoacoustic radar of the world. And he gains the advantage of being little known. He softly returns to the music world years later, and from then on, you might find him anywhere. Damo Suzuki isn't a real singer; he's rather a performer, a kind of visionary of words (which ones, nobody really knows), an improviser tous court. You might spot him on stage before you can even figure out who the hell he is. It really happened: the Psychofagist (Italian grindcore-experimentalist band) told me that during their concert, this almond-eyed, long-haired little man climbed on stage with them, leaving them puzzled, wondering who he was; maybe they'd already seen him, but who knows, and the German woman beside him explains to their guitarist that he is none other than Damo Suzuki of Can. Jaw dropped, a devastating show with good Damo shouting like a madman into the microphone, only he knows what. Thus, this is the performer that lives within him. Most of the albums he releases under his name are long, very long jams recorded live. The little disc I'm presenting here is no exception.
The beauty of these experiments is the constant change of fellow adventurers, a peculiarity that makes each release and performance a different experience from another. On March 5, 2006, Suzuki gathers at the UFO Club in Tokyo a handful of Japanese psychedelia psychopaths and decides to create an acid turmoil within the walls of the little locale. Scrolling through the names you'll come across the second giant of this desperate/disparate team: Tatsuya Yoshida. Are you ready for this? Surely the Nipponophiles of the site (and lately there seem to be quite a few yes yes) surely know who I'm talking about. The others? Probably the others aren't even reading this stuff I write, but for these guys, I make it known that Yoshida is the crazy skin-beater of the mad duo Ruins (and if we really want, also of Acid Mothers Temple). Lots of stuff indeed. And lots of stuff is what we find ourselves listening to. The tracks are long, very long, the tracks are acidic, very acidic. And you immediately get it from the synthesized intro of "The Crystal Desert", which immediately flows into frayed noise riffs and feverish vocal litanies to then organize into drum progressions that show raw nerves in infuriated countertimes, and the beautiful flying reverberations of Yuji Katsui's violin give an almost Middle Eastern touch to it all, accompanying the wordlesswords of the """"""frontman""""", who more than Japanese seems like an impeccable English junkie. Yoshida builds a bone-breaking groove on the following "Moonlight Warrior", and you immediately understand that this formation has two captains while Suzuki dons Beckian/Pattonian/Yamatsukaeyian vestiges (or perhaps they assumed his in due time?), and repeats on loop phrases upon phrases upon phrases, between vocal loops and bestial screams while the bass takes off from time to time into funk grooves full of malaise. And in the only piece where the timing is widely demolished, "Another Dirty Weekend", they manage to reach heights of punk splashes dirtied by annoying sounds and embellished with violin melodies until monstrous slowdowns with included lethal groove only to return to riffs in no time. Applause, the show is over.
When I grow up, I want to be an outsider too.
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