onna

Onna

In an attempt to shed fresh light on the obscure Japanese psychedelia of Keizo Miyanish, Holy Mountain releases this compilation of recordings by his 1980s project, Onna, including the single 'Cortigiana Dal Velo' (plus outtake) excerpts from the album Katawa, cassette-only recordings and a live document from 1983 that marks the debut of Michio Kurihara of Ghost. The bare-bones drum machine backing lends a punk-ish DIY element to proceedings, offering a ruthlessly rigid counterpart to the spidering indiscipline of the noise-guitar and groaning vocals. You can hear where bands like LSD March and Suishou No Fune might have taken some cues from Onna's flailing guitar sound - sprawling loosely and impressionistically across the studio recordings while those thudding machine rhythms instill some sort of orderliness. Kurihara's guitar on the live recordings may lack the finesse of his fluent Big Muff-trashing solos of later years but the squealing leads do add an extra dimension to the already far-out Onna sound, and a fifteen minute version of 'Cortigiana Dal Velo' proves a compelling treat as a result. Finally, the album closes with some outsider acoustic blues, with 'Salamandra, Salamander (The Three Sisters)' finding Keizo teetering on the verge of Jandek territory.