Polysics
Now Is The Time!

"Now Is The Time!", Polysics.

Necessary ingredients:

• About ten lysergic acids
• Fake Ray-Ban sunglasses, strictly counterfeit
• A large label with J-Pop written on it
• Any edition of Super Mario or, alternatively, Pacman
• At least five or six records from Devo
• A guitar
• A bass
• A drum
• A synthesizer adorned with sloppy graffiti
• Salt and pepper
• A blender

Go up to the attic, the one you filled a while ago with old childhood memories now worn and obsolete. Dig through the junk and pull out something useful: a cassette for Nintendo's Super Mario, for example... or, if you're allergic to the cheerful Italian/American plumber, opt for the yellow ghost-eater candy-monster-dot-pill of good old Pacman. Since you're there, rummage a bit through the old vinyls and come out with a few LPs of Devo, the cybernetic/American band you always made fun of, but secretly liked.

Now go down to the basement. Grab all the musical instruments you come across, without distinctions or preferences. Whatever you find, you find. Keep a special eye on the synthesizer: it should be strange, unusual, out of the ordinary.

You can now return to the kitchen. Take off those lousy fake Ray-Ban sunglasses, which you've been wearing until now. Quickly gather that pack of acids your drugged-up neighbor gave you a couple of days ago. As you grab the salt and pepper, remember that J-Pop sticker you bought earlier.

Now, you're ready. Throw all these ingredients in a state-of-the-art blender, hit the max speed and sit on a chair to admire the incredible spectacle coming out. Among flashes of light, more or less suspicious noises, and sudden accelerations, the final result takes shape at the bottom of the glowing contraption. It's nothing more than a regular music CD, with a cover featuring four Japanese guys dressed in a red apron, complete with stroboscopic glasses. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one of the most twisted bands in the recent Japanese scene: the Polysics!

It's simply about grasping the concept and, once understood, playing along with the joke. This "Now Is The Time!", the band's fourth album, released in 2006 under the Tofu label, is nothing more than a varied, grand, labyrinth-like virtual plaything, easy to get lost in, drown in, or even worse, become irretrievably disoriented in. It's a continuous diversion that, depending on your perspective, falls into the pretentious or rises to the mocking and irreverent.

It is nevertheless obvious to emphasize that it is certainly not an album for everyone, given the sharp and distinctive sound and the great wealth of musical influences (and often citations). In the noisy punk of the frenetic "Tei! Tei! Tei!" (Melt Banana style), with a little patience, you can find a Pacman of the 2000s, complete with a mohawk and studs, thrown randomly among a multitude of electronic connectors. Or again, the cybernetic geometry of the single "I My Me Mine," which from nonsense rhyme knows how to mold itself into a sort of crooked and distorted klezmer, thanks to a flute that magically appeared for some unknown reason. And how can we not mention the utterly deviant "Ah-Yeah!!", a dissonant psychedelic ride filled with gurgling noise, halfway between the serious and the playful?

The vast sonic field that shapes the acoustic features of Polysics is at times truly irritating and unbearable, almost unsustainable: this is the case with the constant default state of "Walky Talky," mixing cold and childish electronics with vocal lines recalling the best episodes of the Californian Locust, or the southern splashes that taint the -too- artificial "Toisu!". The strokes of brilliance do exist, undoubtedly: ranging from the military march, halfway between punk and ska, of "Boy's Head," a perfect transfiguration in the Far East of the Ramones, to the hallucinogenic screen, complete with glam metal solo, of "The Next World" (another strong reminder of Devo). Not to mention the gem of the entire work, "Wild One," a sonic ride à la Blondie, accompanied by a slow and cadenced singing that feels at home in front of a campfire. Made of pixels, of course.

But what could be a truly enjoyable CD, with some "extremism" -quotation marks mandatory- becoming, in a few moments, a decent CD with some excessive "extremism" and some truly needless, if not harmful, songs. The western/cartoon parody of "Oh! Monaliza" (there's even Heidi's yodel) does not achieve the desired humorous effect, and does nothing but mock the band's potential. But even the electrolyte hisses of "Baby Bias" and the energy of the prophetic "Skip It," when listened to together with their companions, prove to be ultimately self-serving.

Whoever had the luck not to lose their sanity during this short trip can thus give a final judgment on this "Now Is The Time!". The feeling is of having witnessed something relatively beautiful, objectively unique, but certainly, albeit slightly, not indispensable. Too much eagerness to overdo, too many mistakes, too much presumption? It's uncertain. The only sure thing is that the Polysics are out of their minds, they are perfectly aware of it, and they're proud of it. Without too many thoughts.