Tuesday 4 January 2011

FULL WOLF MOON (19 January 2011)

The musick dedicated to this Esbat is:

ITSUTSU NO AKAI FUSEN

FLIGHT 1 & 2


Original Issue: 1970 Underground Record Club URG-4006)
Original Issue: 1971 Underground Record Club URG-4007)

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Margot-meter: 4 moons / 5

Impossible-to-find holy grail ranking at #47 in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler is finally available in Margot's coven!!!!

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from Julian Cope's Japrocksampler:

Imagine an LP half full of songs such as Erika Eigen's 'I Wanna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper' from the A CLOCKWORK ORANGE soundtrack. Mo Tucker's Velvet Underground ballads 'After-hours' and 'I'm Sticking with You', and that ubercute ditty Tonight You Belong to Me' that Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sang together in The Jerk.

Imagine that same album also contains a few euphorically strung-out cosmic folk ballads somewhere in the style of Tim Buckley's Straight Records LP BLUE AFTERNOON united with Culture's super-sweet TWO SEVENS CLASH, but sung by a man and a woman in the manner of Emtidi's SAAT. Then imagine that some of that material was extended to cover a whole side of 12" vinyl, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser-style.

Okay, now imagine there were two such LPs and that they were released one year apart on a cult label called Underground Record Club, and you've hit exactly where Itsutsu no Akai Fusen is coming from. It's a weird combination of urban torch songs, rural lovey-dovey indoor campfire, and transcendental tripped out meditative space folk. Both LPs were packaged in cosmic spacious gatefold sleeves, and the records were mainly sung by female singer Hideko Fujiwara and written by songwriter Takashi Nishioka, the man responsible for a fairly legendary Japanese album, MELTING GLASS BOX. that I've never really found much time for.

These two records I like very much indeed, however, so they're hidden away at number 47 because I listen to them all the time, despite having never had much time for the Japanese early-'70s folk scene. So please excuse this review hyping two LPs simultaneously, but by 2012, you'll most likely have found time to investigate these records and, hopefully, are by now digging them.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
kmw said...

essential! thanks!

Anonymous said...

O My Gawd!! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Great records, indeed. Thank you!

buzzbabyjesus said...

I've only just had time to sample it here and there, but I can tell I'm really going enjoy giving it a good listen tomorrow. I think it will blow my mind. Thanks!

ushaped said...

happy new year and thanks so much!

M— said...

Hubba hubba! Happy new year to us!

Stefan M—
http://friendsound.wordpress.com

bjones said...

I tried to fill out the form.. got an error saying you'd maxed out your email submissions for the month. Do I have to wait for February?

Margot F. said...

Use the backup form my friend (look for "Compile the form at this link" in the blog main page)

slovenlyeric said...

Thank you for your hard work in locating this one. Now that I have finally had a chance to hear the record, I can say it is really very good folk based music. Nice harmonies. Because this was the hardest of those mentioned in Cope's book to find, I built it up a bit in my mind and few things can live up to that. But Much of Flight Part 2 is truly beautiful. Thanks again.

Margot F. said...

I'm glad to be useful to this fantastic community gravitating around this little blog!

Love you all guys (and girls) ;)

Anonymous said...

Can anyone clarify the full titles? The first one is clearly called [something in Japanese] Part 1: New Sky and not just Flight 1 as Cope would have it, but is it Flight Part 1: New Sky, and is the second Flight Part 2: Flight?

Great to have these at last, though now having heard them, I can't help but think Cope's ol' hyperbole wagon was running full tilt on these records. Cosmic? Not really, more daydreamy like an early 70's Pink Floyd ballad (without Gilmour lead guitar). Part 1 is lovely, especially the side-long suite, and a real grower - it's very simple and, on the surface, not that interesting without the added street sound effects, but I keep going back to it and enjoying it a lot (except maybe the second-last track on side 2). Part 2 is a lot more ordinary in comparison, I thought. To sum up, I like them, especially Part 1, but I don't think they're awesome enough to go on the top 50 list, quite straight in many ways really, though maybe Part 1 could scrape on there if considered without Part 2; I imagine many people will be very disappointed when they finally discover these two records! I'm surprised that with some stuff (eg Helpful Soul) Cope put them on the list due to a standout track or two, even though by his own admission he thinks much of the album isn't that good - and writes off Strawberry Path completely because of the few less-cool filler tracks - but then puts on two albums together which are only really justified in his context from the side-long track on Part 1. I think he was clutching at straws to fill out the quota of 50 albums, and if he were less biased and also looked a bit deeper he could have found some better selections. Please note I'm not knocking these records, just trying to be honest in appraising the music, and debating whether they should be on the top 50 'japrock' list, which from krautrocksampler standards of selection, most people would expect something included on there to be pretty cosmic and and awesome. I think there are plenty of albums that could have better served the purpose, that Cope didn't even mention, or mentioned but dismissed totally (and in my mind, totally unfairly in most cases in the book). Btw, I also think the Maru Sankaku Shikaku collection is a mess with few redeeming features that should also have been left off the list.
There, rant over. Been wanting to say that for a while.
Anyway, a big heartfelt THANKS for posting this stuff, as I desperately wanted to hear them even if they didn't blow my head off :-)
best wishes,
Chris

Margot F. said...

I think these are the real titles, Chris:

Itsutsu No Akai Fusen - New Sky - Part 1

Itsutsu No Akai Fusen - Flight - Part 2

Thank you for the great comment you left

Anonymous said...

Thanks Margot. Seems a bit funny to have part 1 and part 2 when there's no main title apparent that they're part 1 and part 2 *of*, if you get what I mean. Anyway, if I ever get to show these covers to a Japanese friend, I'll let you know what he says!

By the way, is it perhaps a fault with my own download, or did other people notice some small gaps and jumps in some tracks of part 2?

best wishes,
Chris