Label: Turukame Records – TK-002 Format: Vinyl, 8", 33 ⅓ RPM, EP, Gatefold Country: Japan Released: Genre: Rock Style: Experimental, Avantgarde
Oddball privately released 8” gatefold dredged from the deepest recesses of the 80s Japanese DIY underground.Unplayed dead-stock - red alert.
It’s the scene that keeps on giving.We’ve spent more time than we’d care to admit trawling the gutters of this off-shoot of Japanese music and it seemingly never bottoms out.Pressure was a short-lived group (2 releases) containing four musicians in their early years, the most notable being Mimic Records founder Sugibayashi Yasuo who also did that extremely collectable ritualistic mind-bender The Mask Of The Imperial Family.Back to this though, four cuts of naive dub/funk/avant-rock experimentation that slips out of any easy box you’d attempt to put it in.The A1 is a tense / clattering atonal rhythm piece that feels like Remko Scha’s self-playing guitar machine finally breaking down, or Tony Sinden’s one-off LP on Piano, whereas A2 slides into a looser dub groove drizzled in spindly sliding guitar and frayed hi-hats.You’re welcome to pick your own highlight, but B2 ‘What’ is an irresistible piece of awkward straight-jacket funk with that blasé vocal style that’s characteristic of the time, preceded by bizarre array of group vocal acrobatics.Maybe due to the Galapagos effect that a lot of this music never found homes internationally, but undoubtably this baffling one-off release fits right in with the likes of Viola Renea, Tristan Disco, P.T.A’s, Momoyo & Lizard! any many others we hold close to our hearts.It literally never ends.(NM/NM - unplayed deadstock, 8” gatefold with insert)
