Sashitai
(2006)
There are good bands and there are good albums. Sometimes, if you're lucky you get both at the same time. In Japan, where the primary medium for the transmission of underground music into the hearts and minds of The People is through live performances, you have the timeless pleasure of watching bands grow steadily over time, with bands you once thought decent but unremarkable gradually blossom into something truly astonishing. It does mean, however, that bands tend to develop in a live environment and, to put it bluntly, their albums tend to be pretty awful.

Sashitai, like nearly all Japanese underground rock albums, is lo-fi, but nevertheless the sound balance is spot-on and it skirts clear of unnecessary scuzziness. You get the sense that Hyacca would welcome the chance to fully explore the possibilities of a recording studio rather than recoiling into the defence mechanism of the kind of willfully underproduced, shallow-sounding records that so many bands think sound raw and 4real. Overriding all thoughts about production though, is the bewildering array of quality songs and the sheer, breathtaking ambition of the music. Like an Aladdin Sane for the new post-punk generation it fuses genres together rather than skipping capriciously from one to the other, injecting fresh energy into much-copied genres like new wave and shoegazer music, but incorporating jazz, funk and beyond where they deem appropriate.

Of course, this would mean nothing if it were simply an exercise in musical egotism, but talented a foursome of musicians though they are, they put their tools firmly in the service of songs. The contrast between the male and female vocalists is what goves many of the songs their dynamic, perhaps best exemplified on Riot. On the surface it seems the poppiest track, but the catchy new wave melody that gives it its driving force gives way to harsh screams from the deepest, fieriest bowels of metal before swinging back at a moment's notice. The title track is similarly schizophrenic, with its meandering jazz piano recalling some of Bowie's more experimental 70s material, and other sections more reminiscent of Sonic Youth at their punkiest. Elsewhere Single Coil is as good an example of waltz-time post-punk balladry as you're ever likely to hear, Sick Girl and Telephone Number are Kraut-punk at its best, and opening and closing tracks Angel Fish and Skyline, taking up near to half the album's running time between them, are as epic and pompous as they are powerful and perfectly formed. Ian Martin Dec.07.06