Archive recordings by Seishokki (roughly translates as"Organs Of Blue Eclipse") a band formed in Asahikawa in northern Japan while it's members were still in high school. The story goes that the band's musical influences were as likely to be only heard of as actually heard but original member Ikuro Takahashi (who has since gone on to perform with a veritable who's who list of outfits that includes Fushitsusha, High Rise, Che-Shizu and Maher Shalal Hash Baz) recalls that along the way various members of the band had been moved by the extended thump and drone of Faust with Tony Conrad, the deep synthesizer explorations of Klaus Schulze and the passionate avant-folk of Kazuki Tomokawa. Some members of the band had also been drawn to the writings of critic/promoter Aquirax Aida who was responsible for the introduction of a lot of western free music to Japan. The onset of punk may have contributed a little to the freedom a bunch of non-musicians felt to start a band but Takahashi has suggested that a lot of their inspiration came from what was probably a misunderstanding of minimalism. What comes out in these recordings is a wonderfully primitive approach to the repetition of minimalism with exuberant forays into wild synth/percussion driven noise. The result falls somewhere between the original Amon Duul LPs and "Outside the Dream Syndicate" with a nod to the soon to come explosion of NOISE in the Japanese underground. These are believed to be the only surviving recordings of this band with the exception of a vocal track with lyrics concerning an eternal teenage concern deemed too mortifying for release. If you know any different, get in touch.

mp3 (1.6MB) Untitled track 4