Customer Reviews

Angherr Shisspa

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It amazes me how much good music comes from Japan. Between Keiji Haino, Merzbow, Muddy World, Ruins, Otomo Yoshihide, Acid Mothers Temple and the Boredoms, you'd think the place would be bled dry of anything new to offer up. Alas, such is not the case as Koenjihyakkei prove, who manage to add their name to the list of great avant/prog artists like those above. I honestly hear something new every time I throw this one in the changer. The shifting dynamics, tight compositions and excellent playing ability of all involved makes this one of the best whim purchases for me thus far. I really can't think of anyone or anything to compare this band to, but if you're into something new, at least moderately interested in the avant-garde and prog scenes, or fascinated with Japanese music, you'll find something to like here.

If you experienced these guys last album you know what to expect. Heavy and dense yet layered prog music that rocks. Magma is the closest comparison...but they are moving away from that specific style and becoming their on voice in the 'Zeuhl' idiom. In this outing you can feel the band has grown in experience: tighter arrangements (if that is posible!), better command of dynamics and voicings and a deeper conviction in the whole 'Zeuhl' thing.
Love it and comes highly recommended!

Before I do dare to call this album one of the best progressive rock, maybe the entire rock canon, my listening crudentials are that I am a rock buff and an open listener. My favorite musics (yes, it is okay to spell it with an "s") are classical, jazz, what are usually the higher art music. I recently (well, years ago) got into seeing rock as an art form. My answers are unprejudiced, uninfluenced, and confident. Of course, it is always personal taste. But when a certian work as an undeniable musicality no matter your taste, I feel I can recognize it.

And wouldn't you know! Angherr Shisspa is such an album!

Seriously, this is a level of musicianship and virtuosity almost never seen in rock. Period. The compositions are driving, meditative, complex. The energy unwaivering. Comparisons like to be drawn between this and Magma albums (another gooden) but I can only compare this to one album I've ever heard (and I've heard 'em all) and that is Dun's only album Eros (can you say masterpiece?).

This album for me gets put in a rank of the greatest fusion albums, of which I use the term loosely: to me it means not just jazz-rock, but all music which obviously combines more than one genre into a "supergenre", that is fusion. These great albums are: Blood Sweat and Tears - Child is Father to the Man, System of a Down - Mezmerize+Hypnotize, Frank Zappa - Absolutely Free, Henry Cow - Unrest, Spring Heel Jack - Disappeared, SBB - Memento z Banalnym tryptykiem, Godspeed You Balck Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists..., Mahavisnu's Inner Mounting Flame, Bitches Brew, Eros, and this. Some of these might not even make my top 30, but they are the prime examples of mastery over many genres. (Obviously, the "great albums" could probably be cited as these kinds too: Trout Mask Replica has a blues influence and The Whie Album is all over the map, but since those are indeed primarily influences and not obvious physical discrepancies I leave them out for the sake of organization!)

Ya.

This is the first album I've purchased of this band, and it is impressive. Many of the compositions are compelling, and the band members are quite adept and well-rehearsed.

This freak-prog outing, from the same twisted mind behind Schiz-core outfit Ruins, shifts between brilliantly deranged-- offering glorious bouts of unhinged, unapologetic musical-meth including flourishes of ambitious beauty abound, to showy, concentratedly annoying structures that seem to do nothing but alienate different segments of songs when the dissections feel overly self-conscious (a critique not so much of the group but of Yoshida's persistently relentless approach). With Angherr Shisspa however, almost all of these elements gel consistently over a full album, and the insane joy throughout is palpable.

This outfit takes progressive rock, layers over it something I'll call Rock Opera, and coordinates it so seemlessly and savagely, and excitingly, that you will hear depth, and revelations every time you play it. I don't know how they prepare this music, or how many hours they spend on it, but I'm sure they SHOW UP FOR BAND PRACTICE.
It's mindblowing, at times beautiful, and at other points galloping like Arthur's knights from Excalibur.
Comparisons to Stereolab, Yes, Queen (a bit of Bohemian Rhapsody), or others do not much hit the mark.
One thing you may want to know before buying, is that since Koenjihayakkei are fronted by the drummer/songster from Ruins, and he is a known Magma maniac - and Magma is famously wrapped around the "invented" language of those French progsters - the vocals are built on "nonsense" syllables. It's not something you'll likely be soon singing along with, nor looking for the typical song sentiments.

There's nothing much like it, I wonder where they will take it next!

This is the best of the best.... There is hardly anything else to say. I wish I could translate what this music speaks. It's somewhat comparable to some of Frank Zappa's mindless work, yet this seems to go more places then Zappa could even of imagined... It could be just the better quality recording possible for koenjihyakkei, but I hate to think so... With Yoshida Tatsuya you can't go wrong....EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

buy this cd..... if you don't just go die

Koenjihyakkei gets an "A" for effort. But like so much stuff these days, it sounds like music for those who have never heard the precedents.

This band's work is to music what student films are to cinema. With a typical Japanese sensibility, Koenjihyakkei demonstrates that they listened carefully to all the right albums, became fanatical adherents to that music, then resolved to synthesize something ostensibly new. If the result is not new, they can be forgiven for being classicists. If it is new, it is technically appropriate, but aesthetically pointless. Koenjihyakkei's work is the music that the most rabid modern prog fans would make if they could play and sing: Amusing and flattering to those they imitate, but embarrassingly naive.

For all that, it has its moments. This music might be for you if you are young and, in the spirit of 70s prog and fusion fans, you enjoy the audible spectacle of instrumental pyrotechnics as a vehicle for loosely defined conceptual grandiosity. Or if you're old and have a nostalgia for the originals, you may be charmed by Koenjihyakkei's devotion to the genre, especially their focus on Zeuhl.

I was there the first time around for prog, fusion, punk, etc. Even the best examples of those musics were derivative and relied on recombinant musical vocabulary. But there was more soulfulness then. There was then more often than not an aesthetic maturity and depth that I find wholly lacking from the music of Koenjihyakkei. Listen to King Crimson's "Red" and "Larks' Tongues in Aspic", Magma's "Köhntarkösz" or even "Attahk", or David Sancious and Tone's "Forest of Feelings"; the players had crazy chops, but the music always came first, even when the technique was flaunted, and the compositions have shape, subtext and emotive nuance. On the punk side, listen to Bad Brains' eponymous debut, or The Deabeats' or Devo's first works; high concept and excellent chops, but always lots of soul and 'music first'.

I have truly liked only one Japanese band that plays occidental music: Sadistic Mika Band. They loved music, could really play and generally succeeded in walking the fine line between formalism and soulfulness. At their best, Sadistic Mika Band rivaled the camp of early Roxy Music and zaniness of early Sparks. Even on their "Black Ship", after falling prey to self-seriousness (as all good 70s musical artists did), they imbued their music with a deference to aesthetics.

Koenjihyakkei reminds me of why I ceased to look to Japan for good music in the occidental style. If there are Japanese artists making new Japanese music, I would love to hear it. But Koenjihyakkei's music isn't it.