You hear their influence everywhere. Yet they're not anywhere.
September 18, 2017 6:25 AM   Subscribe

In search of Les Rallizes Dénudés: A writer's search for more information on the enigmatic Japanese psychedelic noise-rock collective, who released no official studio recordings (going into semi-seclusion in the 1970s after their bassist hijacked a plane to North Korea and emerging to play the occasional secret gig, years apart) and are known mostly from a variety of live bootlegs with liner notes of varying reliability.
posted by acb (15 comments total) 34 users marked this as a favorite
 
I wonder is Gibson gets upset when the real world out-Gibsons him.
posted by humboldt32 at 7:36 AM on September 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yet they're not anywhere

except, of course, on YouTube.
posted by flabdablet at 7:41 AM on September 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Just hit 09:40 in that piece and my brain cannot decide whether it's more important for me to be consumed with shivers or just melt completely. Thanks, acb!
posted by flabdablet at 7:44 AM on September 18, 2017


There used to be a great history of LRD at noise.as (run by the inimitable Alan Cummings) but the articles on the site seem to have been taken down.

A very nice article here: Music vs Noise 08 – Enter the Mirror: The Ontological Noise of Les Rallizes Denudes.

Ex-members of Rallizes have also been in Fushitusha, Suishou no Fune and Shizuka, for those interested in continuing further down the Japanese psych rabbit hole.
posted by remembrancer at 8:11 AM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is great. They sound like an ancestor of both Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Melt-Banana. I love it.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:24 AM on September 18, 2017


I wonder is Gibson gets upset when the real world out-Gibsons him.

On twitter he seems fairly relaxed, and the other day someone introduced a (code) virus into a DNA sequencer via the sequence data, which seems to me the most Gibsonesque thing one could manage.




So far.

posted by pompomtom at 8:33 AM on September 18, 2017


They sound like an ancestor of both Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Melt-Banana.

As I go on, there's a bit of Pink Floyd as well. (Who they were, of course, contemporary with.)
posted by tobascodagama at 8:43 AM on September 18, 2017


The Japanese counterculture of the late 60s + early 70s that produced Les Rallizes Dénudés and affiliated communal 'family' bands / arts collectives like Taj Mahal Travelers and the Acid Seven Group is fascinating, and there's very little good information about it available in English.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:35 AM on September 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


> There used to be a great history of LRD at noise.as (run by the inimitable Alan Cummings) but the articles on the site seem to have been taken down.

Is this it? via archive.org

fwiw, that article cites a few official recordings, although only released in extremely limited editions.
posted by ardgedee at 11:25 AM on September 18, 2017




ardgedee, yes, that's the one, thanks!

(still haven't figured out how to quote posts properly!)
posted by remembrancer at 12:36 PM on September 18, 2017


Also from archive.org, Alan Cummings' convenient intro to psychedelia in Japan. Much of the best music of the last three decades has come out of those scenes. PSF Records (whose founder/curator Hideo Ikeezumi passed on early this year) was instrumental in bringing much of this to the wider world - amazing things to be discovered in their back catalogue, some of which is being brought back into print by Black Editions in the US.
posted by remembrancer at 12:55 PM on September 18, 2017


Wow this is weird and good
posted by latkes at 2:01 PM on September 18, 2017


They sound like an ancestor of both Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Melt-Banana.

to me they sound kinda like a noisier grittier precursor to Galaxie 500. I like it.
posted by ovvl at 5:40 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Here's a lovely video of Les Rallizes Dénudés playing at an outdoor festival in 1976.
posted by Kattullus at 8:59 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


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