Tomoyuki Aoki & Harutaka Mochizuki
Live At Instants Chavirés
FRANCE DECIMATION SOCIALE CD (2025)
Fans of Japanese psychedelic rock from the 1990s and Japanese improvisation will want to grab a piece of this scorching monster instantly. Live recording of dismal slow-mode spastic folk song mode spliced with excessive Haino-styled guitar eruptions and obnoxious squealing saxophone blurts – everything you could possibly desire, wrapped up in a single slice of cured meat.
Guitarist Tomoyuki Aoki comes to this juncture from the Hamamatsu band Up-Tight, formed in 1992, and emerging on a number of self-released discs until Alchemy Records exposed them on their 2004 album Lucrezia. Harutaka Mochizuki has appeared on Bishop Records with his untamed saxophone and his voice, also surfacing on Michel Henritzi’s An’archives label on records such as Free Wind Mood and Shiroi Kao. This record shows the duo sunk in black fogs of uncertainty and bleak paranoia, moods which they occasionally fight against with sonic violence, hoping to release themselves from the stranglehold of these dire phantoms, flailing and thrashing like chained prisoners. But the plaudits and cheers of the audience on these live recordings are at odds with the depressive mood, and even this small clutch of devotees are subdued and puzzled, as if they are slowly becoming aware of what’s at stake as they regard this intense psycho-drama played out on the stage.
It’s presented as a single continuous track of 50:31 mins, but Aoki and Mochizuki offer a number of episodes here, quite often beginning in the song-form mode – if you can call it that. It reminds us most of Les Rallizes Denudes, often named as the benchmark of this particular form of slow-moving, hollowed-out extreme form of noisy garage rock which inspired many other Japanese combos to trudge down similar painful pathways, such as LSD March, Miminokoto, Kousokuya, and Chouzu. Plenty of reverbed guitar and wretched vocals with added delay for that all-important “haunted” effect that produces visions of vicious spectres hovering everywhere. However, our duo distinguish themselves with added saxophone skronking and barkerments from Mochizuki, at times evoking the shrill cries of an alien bird before lapsing into decadent-romantic lounge-band slurs of the most sarcastic and sentimental venom. Then there’s the guitar explosions of Aoki, only sparingly used, but they bring a suitably apocalyptic moment to the music as needed, entirely in fitting with the general atmosphere. When song mode is left at the front door, we have improvised instrumentals full of dementia and amp-smashing genius, the musicians following their own peculiar logic into oblivion.
It’s plain to see why the owner of this label, Romain Perrot, was compelled to release this particular black raven – he’s no stranger to producing his own extreme take on the “song” form with experiments dating back to 2020 if not earlier…unhinged vocals, chronic guitar playing and abject instrumental nihilism emerging from his corner of the French underground…and very much attuned to the sounds on this release. Instants Chavirés is a thriving venue in Montreuil and has seen a huge range of international experimental geniuses on its stages. Today’s item was recorded there in Nov 2024 by Benjamin Pagier. Only an excerpt is available for purchase on Bandcamp; to hear the whole thing, you need to buy a copy of the CD. (27/08/2025)