Sunday, July 18, 2010

Amaryllis - Oto-san 7" (Amaryllis Records, 1985)

Tracklisting

Side A
Oto-san

Side B
Sensei (Sono No Ichi)
Shinya No Dekigoto

How about that cover, eh? This group was from Kyoto, home to an incredible experimental scene in the 80s. Much of this scene is documented in the "Foam" 2LP comp on Ylem records, produced and curated by Kaoru Sato of EP-4 and R.N.A. Organism. Sato's name on a record causes a giant exclamation mark to appear above my head, and you'll know why after hearing this.

I'll come right out and say that this is one of my favorite 7"s ever. 10 minutes of hallucinatory mania starting with "Oto-san" on the A-side, a driving, post-punky track that goes way overboard in every department. The nuttiness is ratcheted up a notch from the get-go on side B, the first track seeming to perpetually be in a state of trying to decide whether it wants to be 33⅓ or 45rpm, with echo-guitar and plink-plonk synths only adding to the dizziness. B2 throws in out-of-the-blue classical samples and a few abused instruments, punctuating vocalist Alice Sailor's surreal wails. Stupefying.

7 comments:

megane-kun said...

'I plan to share many more records on Telegraph.'

Please do!

wemustamputate said...

just stumped upon this blog, looks great! this 7" is seriously warped and incredible stuff. can't wait to hear more from this crew!

wemustamputate said...

wow, this is blowing my mind! can't wait to hear more from this crew.

Bounce said...

I own both their "Kokujin to watashi" and "Sekimatsu dayo zen'in shûgô" vinyl records, and -sadly- I must admit that this stuff is really weak and totally pointless.
Disappointing records in the worst aspects of "kansai no-wave", melting pseudo-experimentation with low musicianship skills and poor ideas in some really short and standard pop-songs format.
There's some good kansai no-wave bands, but as far as I am concerned, Amaryllis definitly takes the worst, "slacker", aspect of this style to make really boring and pointless music.
Not experimental nor difficult, just music made by dabblers.
And not enough weird to prevent from being boring.

Excuse me, guys, for being that angry, but I feel that I really got no time nor money to spend with such useless music.

Great blog, though.
Keep up the good work.

c.patera said...

thanks for your opinion, Bounce.
let me know if there are any records that you would like to see on this blog.

Bounce said...

Thank you very much for this offer.
I guess that it must be kinda difficult to make such a blog, so I prefer enjoying the stuff you will post by yourself on the near future.

But, as I am also an avid collector of all stuff japanese from the 80s, especially among post-punk and indies, maybe we could share some stuff.....even if I can't convert vinyls on mp3 -I don't know how to do it and don't have the required equipement-.
Though, I can convert cds.
Let me know if you are interested....

Anonymous said...

My word! This is extraordinary. Thank you very much.