"Every single note was clear, it shrunk all the distance with its power" - Honda Shigeto, recording engineer on First LP
"For a group with a 25-year history on the Tokyo underground scene, Kousokuya have left very little imprint of their activities. Once heard, though, their sound is unmistakable -- a grinding, soaring sonic blackhole that charts the empty gulfs of tension-space like no one else this side of Fushitsusha" - Alan Cummings
Tonight Avant Gardening takes a dark, dionysian trip through into the weightier end of Japanese psych with Tokyo band Kousokuya (as well as a few tracks from leader/ guitarist Kaneko Jutok's solo and duo work.)
Kousokuya were among the less heralded stars of the incredibly fertile Japanese psychedelic underground. Only releasing a handful of albums in a 30 year history (plus a couple more for the black leather and sunglasses-clad Jutok), its a corpus that presents a decisively articulated and powerful sound world.
Typified by Jutok's glassy, sharply defined and fractured guitar skree over a darkly churning, pummeling rhythm section equally capable at rushing forward downhill with weight and momentum or pulling back into endless flailing narrative-free suspension, they were an often astonishing unit, as strong and strange as much more heralded and prolific contemporaries like High Rise and Acid Mothers Temple.
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Playlist:
1. Kousokuya, 'Removal' from 1st (1991)
2. Kousokuya, 'Dreams of the Recollection' from 1st (1991)
3. Kousokuya, 'The Miracle' from First Live 1979 (2006)
4. Kaneko Jutok & Kikukawa Takahisa, 'Kirin' from Wedged Night (2005)
5. Kaneko Jutok & Kikukawa Takahisa, 'The Wedge' from Wedged Night (2005)
6. Kaneko Jutok, 'Endless Ruin' from Endless Ruins (2001)
7. Kaneko Jutok, 'The Everlasting Labyrinth' from Endless Ruins (2001)
8. Masayoshi Urabe & Kousokuya, 'Scene 1 - the Western Lands' from The Dark Spot (1997)
9. Masayoshi Urabe & Kousokuya, 'Dream Shadow' from The Dark Spot (1997)
10. Kousokuya, 'Untitled' from Tokyo Flashback vol 1 compilation (1991)
11. Kousokuya, 'Shadow of a Dream' from Echoes from Deep Underground (2007)
12. Kousokuya, 'The Dark Spot' from 1st (1991)
13. Kousokuya, 'Broken Suffering Song' from Ray Night 1991-1992 Live (1995)
