LSD-march, the brainchild of Japanese guitarist
Shinsuke Michishita (initially aided by Masami Kawaguchi on guitar and Fushitsusha's drummer Ikuro Takahashi on drums),
debuted with the six mellow anemic ballads a` la
Lou Reed of
Shindara Jigoku (Siwa, 2004).
Indolence reigns supreme in The Lamp - Tomorrow's Godard.
Nude And Bizarre is not so much as song as a aimless
free-form jam.
The only rave-up, Clepsydra Flames, is chaotic and amateurish although
with enough guitar noise to make Jimi Hendrix proud and enough tribal ferocity to make
MC5 proud.
Empty Rubious Red (White Elephant, 2005) is still ruined by the
leader's passion for the slow whispered stoned
ballad (notably As Many As Stars In The Sky and
I Have Only Hands For Hold You).
Luckily, Empty Nubious Red returns to
the dissolute chaos of Nude And Bizarre (incidentally, reprised here
in a more compact version) and adds cosmic overtones,
eventually soaring into a hurricane of guitar distortion.
Constellation Of Tragedy (Important, 2007) was an even shorter
(five-song) mini-album.
Totsuzen Honno no Gotoku/ Suddenly Like Flames (White Elephant, 2002 - Last Visible Dog, 2005) collected recordings from 1997 to 2002.
Kanashimino Bishounen (Cycle, 2004) is a live album that documents
a slightly more aggressive style.
The double-disc Nikutai No Tubomi (Beta-Lactam Ring, 2007) contrasted
the 39-minute juggernaut Nikutai no Tubomi and a disc of
mostly-acoustic ethereal fantasies.
Nikutai no Tubomi opens with a cosmic suspense that is soon
populated with a volley of slowly revolving distorted guitar riffs.
A pulsation slowly emerges and evokes the drums, that begin to hammer and
pound while the guitar unleashes ever more extreme noises.
The shorter pieces runs the gamut from the spartan sonata for percussion
Aubade to the grotesque fanfare Elephant,
from the absurdist skits of Stone and Tempo (in which virtually
nothing happens)
to the chaotic percussive bacchanal of Holy Ghost.
Each is a scientific strategy to undermine and subvert whatever idea was in
the mind of the musicians. The result borders on self-parody but also
on creative postmodernist deconstruction.
Love's repetitive pattern of ringing guitar tones and industrial-grade hisses is littered with clownish electronic sounds.
LSD-march had transformed into an octopus of acid-rock, noisecore and post-rock.
The insane collage of
Uretakumo Nakunarutorika (Beta-Lactam Ring, 2008) was one of their most
extreme recordings.
Miminokoto, the trio of LSD-march's singer/guitarist Masami Kawaguchi,
bassist Hiroaki Takeuchi and High Rise's drummer Koji Shimura, released
Miminokoto (2002),
3 (2004),
Green Mansions (Alchemy, 2005) and
Orange Garage (Last Visible Dog, 2005), besides live albums.
Their casual approach to making albums deprived
Under Milk Wood (Important, 2009) of its bite, turning it into a
cauldron of half-baked ideas:
shoegaze-pop (Bisyonure No Kimi),
stoner-rock (Dare Ga Hoeru, perhaps the best of the bunch, or at least the one energetic moment of the album),
slo-core (Ai No Sakebi, a close second),
post-rock cacophony (Taiyoko No Uta),
acid-rock (Kimi No Uta Wo Kiite Boku Wa Akuma Ni Natta).
