Michio Kurihara
Kurihara had a long history of experience as a guitarist playing with some important Japanese Underground groups like White Heaven, Yura Yura Teikoku, Ghost and Marble Sheep, and lately went touring with Damon & Naomi. This last group its label reissued his 2005 solo debut which was released before in Japan only, on Pedal Records. It also featured two tracks with the sweet folkpop vocals of Aso Ai, who released her second, and also best album on the same label (“Lavender Edition”, 2004) just a year before her appearance on this album, and the rhythm section of Yura Yura Teikoku's drummer, Shibata Ichiro.
It is merely an instrumental, rather accessible album with song-like melody driven, three or four-track arranged guitar work, mostly with the heaviness of the fuzz, but played in a certain controlled manner, and with a pop instrumental attractiveness, with additional drums and bass (especially track 1-2), and just a bit of analogue keyboards. “Pendulum on a G-string : the last Cicada” is a multi-layered guitar track, with a bass/ guitar driven rhythm at first, and fuzz sounds spinning around it, a bit of pedalled keyboard, backward kind of sounds with electric guitar, and amplified guitar. Only the short “Canon in “C” (C for Cicada)”, with distorted guitar lead, reminds of other Japanese groups like White Heaven,.. while a second guitar sets a melodic mood in. The more up-tempo rhythmic 6th track, “Twilight Mystery of a Russian Cowboy” sounds more like a Morricone-melody in a fuzzed surf-rock manner. The second vocal track with Aso Ai, a smoothly calm moment, “The Wind’s Twelve Quarters”, uses strummed guitar and some keyboards instead of guitar (including mellotron), and sparse percussion. "The Old Man and the Evening Star" is another multi-layered moody evening musing, where each guitar follows the other one closely, and the additional keyboards are like stars and clouds passing slowly by in the sky. Last track, “A Boat of Courage” is like the second part of it, a filmic poetic moment, where the title once more describes perfectly the content. It starts moodily with the image of a boat leaving shore, while the second part, with more uptempo drums and bass, with more guitars, the melancholy of that moment of leaving is changed into happiness, strength and courage for what comes anew. All in all, this is a very moody album suitable for repeated listening sessions.
Kurihara’s album will be re-released on May, 21st, a day before the release of his cooperation with Boris on Drag City.
