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Kawaguchi Masami's New Rock Syndicate
The new decade begins with a groovy explosion of sound and colors: Ladies and Gentlemen, here comes The New Rock Syndicate. Band leader Kawaguchi Masami is a veteran of the Tokyo underground scene, being former Miminokoto, Broomdusters and LSD March member, both seminal projects in the development of a certain way to make rock, looking back at the tradition with a new approach, open to psychedelia, noise and free improvisation. As it happens, Masami’s activities soon became the object of a passionate cult among music lovers and record collectors. ‘The Psychedelic Sounds of the New Rock Syndicate‘ is the definitive statement of Masami as songwriter and ferocious guitar player, finding in Kikuchi Akira (bass), Kiyasu (drums) and Hasegawa Yohei (guitar on 'Dazzling Light' and '(Theme From) New Rock Syndicate') the perfect partners in crime for this unbelievable new studio work. The album opens with an almost sabbattesque anthem (‘Why’) where a heavy riffage is accompanied by lamentous vocals; second piece (‘Affected Dance’) is a deconstructed blues jam, with a touch of narcoleptic magic and simply beautiful. Side b is where the miracle actually happens: every single track is a banger, a compendium of 50 years of rock music compressed in 18 minutes of fire on wax.
“Melding Les Rallizes Denudes-style power riff romps with sludge-grind and chugging blowouts reminiscent of High Rise. It’s all executed with such style and flair that there’s never a hint of pastiche.” - The Wire
"Kawaguchi Masami is a Japanese guitar monster who has done time in Miminokoto, LSD March, and Broomdusters, and played with Keiji Haino for a time. This, his new band, is exceptional wailing, burning garage psych-rock grounded in Kawaguchi's trademark heart-breakingly melancholic emotional intensity, instantly hummable, head-nodding toe-tapping riffs and melodies and unavoidably air guitaring white light, white heat guitar solos.” - Palindrone Records
As one of experimental music's most influential guitarists, Bill Orcutt weaves looping melodic lines and angular attack into a dense, fissured landscape of American primitivism, outsider jazz, and a stripped-down re-envisioning of the possibilities of the guitar. Whether he’s playing his decrepit Kay acoustic or gutted electric Telecaster (both stripped of two of their strings, as has been Orcutt’s custom since 1985), Orcutt’s jagged sound is utterly unique and instantly recognizable, compared with equal frequency to avant-garde composers and rural bluesmen. The New York Times has called him a "powerful musician... a go-for-broke guitar improviser," and described his sound as "articulated sprays of arpeggiated chords and dissonance.”