Favorite Bands/ Songs

[Sentimental Gentleman]

2. Les Rallizes Denudes

The greatest creators of music of all time (The Gerogerigegege transcended music, which is why they rank higher). I see them as less of a band and more of a coalition of mystic warriors led by Mizutani Takashi standing unafraid between the gates of Heaven and the gates of Hell. Though all of their songs are worthy, especially as they perpetually unfold under the aegis of Mizutani's wandering, lonely guitar, I believe three in particular managed to capture the most profound of sentiments. Mizutani's another one who disappeared, another whom I must pray to return to us some day in glory. And if there is one "conventional" band I wish to model my own spiritual music after, it is this one; sadly, I've yet to find anyone with a sympathetic soul, so that remains but a dream.

These would be Otherwise Fallin' in Love (aka Romance of the Black Grief):

---

Night of the Assassins:

---

And their masterpiece, a work which I feels sums up the eschatology of all humanity in four chords and a few simple words, White Awakening:

---

3. High Rise

The ultimate psychedelic speed freaks. Let's not mince words: Munehiro Narita is the greatest rock guitarist of all time (Les Rallizes Denudes transcend rock, hence their higher spot). He takes the core rock vocabulary established by Jimi Hendrix and follows its logic even further than Hendrix himself ever did; the only musician I can think to compare him to is Ornette Coleman in the realm of jazz. Coupled with some of the hardest, most brutally honest riffs ever written and a solid, melodic rhythm from bassist/band mastermind Asahito Nanjo, High Rise is what I would define as a "mind shredder"

---

4. The Albert Ayler Quintet

Albert Ayler is a musician whom all must reckon with, for he is the one responsible for destroying the false conception of music as something to do with "notes." His soloing is pure timbre and pure energy, juxtaposed with child-like themes that cradle one once again in the heavenly bosom, a son or daughter of the light. I think Wu Ming 1 (of the Wu Ming collective) put it best when he noted that theme and improvisation have a non-dichotomous relationship in Ayler's music: the theme is only one potential articulation of improvisation, in which resides the Holy Spirit. My own improvisational technique in spiritual music probably owes its greatest debt to Ayler's style (though perhaps even more to his brother Donald's bubbling, minimalist sliding between clustered notes and disparate registers, now that I think about it)

I choose the quintet rather than the trio or the quartet because I feel like they did the best job of bringing a wholeness to Ayler's concept and of articulating its relationship to the original street band music and field hollers of New Orleans.

---

5. Acid Mothers Temple

Encompassing Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno, Acid Mothers Temple & Space Paranoid, etc., etc., etc. They're the cosmic jokers of Japanese psychedelia, far more playful than any of the other bands in that scene, yet maintaining that "high seriousness" William Burroughs spoke of in regards to his own work. There's no denying the genius of Kawabata Makoto's U.F.O.-transmission guitar and the band has a keen ear for psychedelicized "musique concrete" effects...not to mention their dreamy, surrealistic sense of structure and ritual which impressively sustains them over pieces that can be up to an hour long. They never fail to impress; I think that's the best way to describe AMT.