Taj Mahal Travellers

Takehisa Kosugi was a hippie become avantgarde composer. Born in Tokyo in 1938, and graduated in 1962 at the Tokyo University of Arts, Kosugi founded the Japanese equivalent of the Fluxus movement, called "Group Ongaku", a group devoted to improvisation and multi-media performances. In 1969 he formed the Taj Mahal Travellers, a psychedelic-rock group that played lengthy improvised jams that can be summarized in three principles: a Far-Eastern approach to music as a living organism, an intense electronic processing of instruments and voices, a semi-mathematical overlapping of frequencies. Basically: LaMonte Young on acid. Kosugi mainly played electric violin. The band acquired free-jazz improviser Seiji Nagai, Yukio Tsuchiya on tuba and vibraphone, Ryo Koike on santoor (a hammered dulcimer) and on a horizontal double-bass, Michihiro Kimura, who had begun as designer of LP sleeves and started playing percussion and "singing", and Tokio Hasegawa, another improvised singer, all of them much younger than him. Kosugi was on the road with this group between 1971 and 1972, traveling in a Volkswagen minibus from Holland to the Taj Mahal itself. Two albums were made out of that experience: Taj-Mahal Travellers (Sony, 1972), also known as July 15 1972 (reissued in 2002 by Drone Syndicate) and performed by a seven-unit line-up, and Taj Mahal Travellers (Denon, 1983), also known as August 1974 (reissued in 1998 by P-Vine), four tracks over two LPs performed by eight players, plus one side (two tracks) of the legendary double-LP bootleg Live At Oz (Oz, 1973 - OZ Days, 2001), which also includes live performances by obscure Japanese musicians Acid Seven, Minami Masato and Hadaka no Rallizes.

Thirty years later the double-LP Live Stockholm July 1971 (Drone Syndicate, 2001), containing a two-hour long jam, also resurfaced from the vault. It features the original sextet of Takehisa Kosugi, Seiji Nagai, Ryo Koike, Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa and Yukio Tsuchiya. The first piece (58 minutes long) opens in a ghostly atmosphere, with gloomy electronic drones and vocals that imitate ravens. Drones of different kinds join the flow, notably a set of cavernous vocals. Vocals and percussion mimic Hindu ceremonies. The violin disrupts it with its vehement, hysterical loops until the music implodes in a black hole of distortions, and the coda is a flow of random noises. It all feels a bit amateurish and a bit too improvised. The second performance (almost 60 minutes) begins humbly, with sparse austere sounds that recall Stockhausen's electronic music rather than psychedelic rock. Voices join the amorphous body, again in Stockhausen-esque manner, and the insane murmur matches the cryptic zoo of dissonance. The vocals come to rule the music with increasingly powerful drones, and all the instruments follow suit. The effect is similar to watching and extremely slow-motion rendition of a song. While still somewhat unfocused and immature, this second part redeems the flaws of the first one. It ranks as one of the most extreme experiments in vocal music of the time.

July 15 1972 contains three pieces. The 25-minute juggernaut of 1 begins with interstellar radio signals and a sweet drone. The drone mutates slowly into a hypnotic cloud of harmonica and tuba moans. The cloud begins to whirl and rumble, becoming more and more ominous. But soon the trumpet reveals an undercurrent of dejected, agonizing laments, like a desperate Miles Davis howling at the Moon. This turns into an abstract duet of trumpet and electronics, with counterpoint of harmonica. Percussion noises increase amid chirping sounds and stormy electronic winds. Finally, at the last minute, the vocals (Tokio Hasegawa) appear, but they are just wordless shamanic invocations, lost in front of ocean waves. The eleven-minute 2 begins with the same invocation, now rising over dense a cacophony with vibraphone tinklings in the background, at times feeling like a slow-motion remix of Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom. The instruments seem to lose their energy and fade away, with the exception of the santoor, and eventually the vocals stop too, and only sparse harsh santoor notes remain. The 13-minute 3 opens with violin and trumpet moving in opposite directions: the violin exaggerate the mystical emphasis while the trumpet drifts in angelic peace. The LaMonte Young-ian vocals enter the fray, hyper-stoned, carving a middle path between the two instruments, flying into infinite space, and towering over the duel between the two primal forces. When the music seems to have died, the piece ends with torrential drumming.

The four sides of August 1974, each about 20-minute long (the length that fit on an LP side), present the Travellers at their most sophisticated. The first jam is a concert of cosmic hisses that ebb and flow, distortions that scour the abysses of the psyche, sinister wailing and rattling that create a metaphysical suspense. At first, it straddles the line between Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine and Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht, but then it becomes more and more abstract, recalling Sun Ra's extraterrestrial jazz-rock. Percussions are used sparingly. Violin, harmonica, bass, tuba, trumpet, synthesizer, mandolin duet in a subliminal and obscure manner. There is no melody, there is no logic. Just "voices", both subhuman and supernatural, that resonate with a universal inner voice. The second jam is a cacophonous gathering of timbres and gamelan-like tinkling, over which Tibetan chanting and droning intone a demented psalm. Halfway into the piece, the band seems to lose interest in playing, so the rest of the track is a rarified wind of tenuous sounds. The third track continues this silent journey into the unknown, with odd percussive patterns and random dissonance. As the chaos increases and exuberant voices join in, the bacchanal turns into a surreal pow-wow dance.
The last jam continues the program of eerie noises and unlikely counterpoint in an atmosphere that is both dreamy and austere. We are transported to a floating zen garden, traveling on a flying saucer. A wavering harp-like melody invites to meditation, and, for a while, the spiritual mood prevails. Then the percussions break the spell, introducing the usual element of indeterminacy and heresy, and the trip ends, one more time, in the resonating depths of distant galaxies.

Kosugi later became a classical composer, in particular composing scores for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and presenting sound installations at a number of international art festivals. His early solo works, Improvisation (Iskra, 1975), Catch-Wave (Sony, 1975 - Showboat, 2002 - World Psychedelia, 2008) for electronically-processed violin, both considered among his masterpieces (and not too different from Tangerine Dream's contemporary works), and Distant Voices (Columbia, 1976), were in the vein of the jazz improvisations of the time (Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, etc).

His style became to approach the classical avantgarde with Violin Solo 1980 N.Y.C (P-Vine), released only 20 years later, New Sense of Hearing (ALM, 1980), Perspective (Flowerdogs, 1981), Kosugi (Bellows, 1981), En Ban (Fukyosha, 1983).

Melodien (Kunstverein, 1986), Global Village Suite (FMP, 1988), Violin Improvisations (Lovely, 1990), Music for Merce Cunningham (Mode, 1991), Echo (Apollo, 1992) are his mature works.

Improvisation Sep 1975 (Iskra) documents a session of drone improvisations by Toshi Ichiyanagi (Yoko Ono's former husband), the Taj Mahal Travellers' founder Takehisa Kosugi and Stockhausen's percussionist Michael Ranta.

Seiji Nagai released avantgarde albums, notably Electronic Noise Improvisation (1999) and Emergent Improvisation (2015) with Koji Kawai. Tokio Hasegawa became the curator of an Indian museum in Japan.