A landmark music read of the past few years, Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler inevitably rattles the cages of some Japanese music aficionados, with its obsessive focus (Cope, obsessive? gedadahere...) on lumpen jazz-rock crossover no-marks at the expense of the wild early 70s free jazz scene, Mikami, Tomokawa, Keiji Haino et al., and more to the point, the dismissal of this righteous album from Magical Power Mako aka Makoto Kurita:
"Super Record was unlistenable New Age twaddle of the World Music variety, with sleevenotes comparing it to Folk music of India, Turkey and Russia...expressing fully the odour of the soil!. Where the cattle pissed, mate. Sheesh!"
- Japrocksampler
Sheesh, and shame on you Jules for pissing so liberally over a psych folk classic. Curiouser still, given that opener Andromeda comes on uncannily like the mid-section guitar solo-ing of Peggy Suicide's Safe Surfer and the sonic dynamics that introduce the final four tracks would not be out place as an intersong cut on JC's first solo outing World Shut Your Mouth.
Forget folk, the record starts with a spacerock outing in high late 60s Floyd stylee, all brain-throbbing bass and heliocentric intent. Mako’s vision then descends earthward and explores a weird cultic ethno-fusion along the silk road to Asia Minor.
No twee, no twaddle, and don't believe everything you read.
Oddi wrth y brawd
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