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December 02, 2010

Hapmoniym - Magical Power Mako [1972 - 1975] 5 CD Box


1970, teenager MPM spends summer holidays in long bedroom recording sessions, ping-ponging tracks back and forth on a reel to reel, eventually writing on tape box: "Summer 1970, things a 14-year-old boy thinks about". The modus operandum sticks. Hapmoniym was created between 1972-75 in Mako's private studio while working on second album Super Record. Essentially these 5 CDs are notebooks for ideas either polished up for proper release, or else discarded for posterity.

Necessarily, the work is oftimes unfocused and rambling but, steady, there is plenty of shinola amongst the shit; when the mountain contains so much gold it makes the digging worthwhile. The Hapmoniym experience is by design one of excavation and sifting in a single shift: separate "songs" are mounted onto each disc as one index track -  ranging between 43 and 65 minutes in duration - each track in effect its own album. Canny.

And what strange trips the discs are: campfire acid folk, Karakoram kosmische jams and Faust-like grooves collide and morph backwards and forwards into wild tape-splices, synthesiser sound-effect blasts, chanting and indescribably twisted digressions. Ideas take vague shape, feel themselves out, and slowly push to ridiculous limits. Many pieces meander for 10 minutes or so leading to majestic revelation or studio-inflicted self-destruct.  


A monument of sorts to creativity and self-indulgence, and proof that excess can sometimes lead to the palace of wisdom.

Happy digging.

(BTW Japanese avant garde noise fans take note: a young Keiji Haino makes an uncredited vocal appearance somewhere on disc 1 - perhaps his earliest recorded "performance")


Oddi wrth y brawd

1 comment:

nicholab said...

hey, great post! thanks for this.