Customer Reviews

Satori

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Order it immediately and count down the days until your mind will be blown. It's like Can and Black Sabbath made love and gave birth to Godzilla and instead of trashing Tokyo he just smoked out and ROCKED. Heavier than a thousand planets, tripper than if the end of of 2001 was really happening to you right now, and you really were a giant immortal baby hovering in space, and if that were true then forget Strauss, these guys would be the house band. Don't let next Thursday be another day that you've lived without hearing this.

When everybody in the west were dazed by the sounds of Black Sabbath, Depp Purple, Uriah Heep and so, in the east they were capable of rebuild this sounds and going further

A serie of bands heading by The Flower Travelling band were mixing japanese culture, psichedelia and heavy rock with a layer of mistery, angst and poetry...

This record has been a cult piece for many years, is the second of this band, they began covering their heroes in a first recording and on this everything learned is reflected.

Satori is structured in suites, above all i would sugest for first bite Satori 2nd, a song which would be the best thriller soundtrack, wich reflects how japan understood Black Sabbath. In sons as third suite japanese culture and music is very present, not making the songs boring but giving them a psichedelic style very original and enjoyable.

Now is reissued with original artwork and sleevenotes for every hard rocker delight

prime Japanese proto-metal truly essential for all you scholars of the heavy..Heavy in every sense of the word,truly psychedelic stuff - personally,dont hear too much of the Sabbath vibe here but it is fairly riffy for the time!The blending of East/West elements just makes this trip all the more unique.YOU GOTTA HEAR THIS!!

This album is the grandaddy of Acid Mother's Temple. If you like this have a listen to AMTs Electric Heavyland. There are a few Travellin' Band albums kicking around, but this one is the best. Those wonderful eastern scales and melodies set the tone to time travel back almost 40 years to the heyday of free love and psychedelic delights. 5 Stars. Now go check out AMT, also from the land of the rising sun.

I first heard Flower Travellin' Band on Hawaiian underground radio in the early 70's and captured Satori on reel-to-reel. It took about five more years before I found it on vinyl LP in a Japanese department store in Honolulu. Then a space of about 30 years before I again found it on CD. Each time was sonic Nirvana. This is a superb recording, one of a kind, I'd say. Don't think twice, just order it immediately! You will not be disappointed. When you play it for your like-minded friends, I know they will want a copy (but be fair to FTB, tell them to buy one from Amazon like you did).

As far as the music is concerned,I can't add anything to what's already been posted here by other reviewers - this is a brilliant album, and deserves to be owned by anyone with even a passing interest in the freeform Japanese hard rock of the late 60s and early 70s.

Unfortunately, however, it's on Pheonix Records and is therefore - like everything released by said label - a pirate, mastered from vinyl with poor sound reproduction.

My advice would be not to spend money on this CD unless you can afford the legitimate Japanese re-issue (also available on Amazon, albeit for a hefty $34.99).

If not, you're as well to download it for free off the Pirate Bay, or copy it from a friend like I did - seeing as the bandmembers aren't going to see a cent from this shoddy rip-off anyway.

I like Amazon, but I wish they'd stop stocking stuff on Radioactive / Fallout / Pheonix Records. Quite how James Plummer and co. have managed to get away with securing mainstream distribution for illegal products over such a prolonged period of time is mind-boggling.

I first was introduced to this amazing import from the Takashi Miike film Deadly Outlaw Rekka. My only regret is not knowing of this band sooner, contained here on Satori is what I would consider part of early metal history. To describe the sound, the easiest description I could give would be to say they are the japanese Black Sabbath and if you are a fan of Sabbath and other early metal pioneers you owe it to yourself to pick up this import.

This may not be based on origional ideas, but is a great synergy of blues, Pink Flyodian jamming, free form freakouts, and many of the forms that made left field 1960s music great. This Japanise combo does it all full tilt with compleat sincearity.

And why not--with music like this, you're not aiming for hits, or even radio. So do it right. Flower Travlin' Band has it down pat.

After all the hype i finally obtained a copy of this "holy grail". I was not dissapointed..it wasnt exactly what i was expecting either. Sabbath tones, traditional japenese scales..interesting. This isnt psych rock..this is the begining of doom metal.

I originally thought Satori was quite the spectacular album, but after a few serious listens a couple years later, I have to change my review and give it a more average and down to earth rating. Please keep in mind that with an album like this, a rating of 3 could *very* easily turn into a rating of 4 on any given day. This rating is most certainly NOT set in stone.

While the album does a fantastic job giving us a distinctly Japanese-sounding heavy rock jam album from the early 70's, that doesn't necessarily mean the jams themselves are particularly appealing. Or rather, as appealing to thousands of other bands at the time attempting the same thing.

A song like "Satori Part 3" features many Japanese guitar riffs that, at best, can be described as totally cliche and formulaic. If you were to sit there and think about the Japanese culture and their style of music, you can basically predict what some of these guitar riffs will sound like before even listening to them. That's cliche alright.

However, it's extremely hard for me to outright dismiss these guitar jams as secondrate, and that's because... what would this Satori album be secondrate to? What other rock band from Japan was *this* heavy back in the early 70's? What Japanese rock band from the 70's was as popular as the Flower Travellin' Band?

Not that Satori is a popular album in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly has a cult following which elevates its popularity a few notches higher compared to every other Japanese 70's band in existence (unless I'm forgetting an extremely obvious Japanese rock band, but I don't believe I am).

The bottom line to me is that the very best moments on Satori are when the band completely lets loose and just rips out a serious and heavy guitar solo. "Satori Part 4" has an amazing harmonica solo along with an equally memorable guitar jam, so this is my pick for best song on the album.

I'm also really fond of "Satori Part 2" mainly for the vocals and the way the drums and guitar really come together and work brilliantly the entire way through the song. I love this track.

Other than that, the Black Sabbath comparisons are overrated in my opinion, because only some of the drumming resembles the legendary classic Sabbath material. The guitar riffs are -without a shadow of a doubt- *extremely* Japanese-sounding, which results in you, the listener, either loving or hating them. Their repetitive and predictably written nature leads me to believe you won't find these guitar riffs very appealing in the long run. I could be wrong.

So yes, Satori is quite the hard album to review. I'm basically torn between two views. One- this sounds like nothing else from the early 70's thanks to a distinct Japanese style and atmosphere combined with lengthy guitar solos and riffs. Two- even though it sounds like nothing else from the early 70's, the songwriting will probably feel very familiar and predictable to you. I don't know what kind of rating Satori honestly deserves, so a 3 is probably the best bet.