Les Rallizes Denudes

BAUS ‘93

Genre: INDIE / ALTERNATIVE

Colour 2LP
CD + DVD

Boomkat Product Review:

The none-more-elusive psych noise rock legends let rip on a comeback concert from 1993 - at that time their first for five years - spanning white hot takes on classic material, rendered with unusually vivid clarity thanks to meticulous sound restoration, mix and master by one-time band member Makoto Kawabata.

‘Baus ’93’ pits us in the crowd, by the mixing desk at Baus Theatre in Kichijoji, Tokyo, to witness the legendary Takashi Mizutani fronting a Rallizes line-up revolving Katsuhiko Ishii (Guitar), Kiyohiro Takada (Bass), Toshiro Mimaki (Drums) in escalating intensity and depth. For 70’ on record, they drive thru takes on the classic ‘The Night, Assassin’s Night’ up to a 30’ rendition of ‘Darkness Returns’, each led by a Mizutani still incandescent after doing it for over 25 years by this point. Their first concert in five years, it would be followed four days later with a show that was recently unarchived as ‘Citta ’93’. While that one features a different rhythm section, it shares a timeless gnarl and rawness that’s also brought to the fore in the recordings, which are notably stitched together from multiple sources, using a blend of original 8-channel digital multitrack masters and tapes made both in the crowd and off the desk for optimal immersion/immolation.

As their legion acolytes - from liner notes writer Jennifer Lucy Allen, to the LP’s essayist Julian Cope, and Cindy Lee - know all too well, it’s rare to hear the studio-shirking Les Rallizes Dénudés so damn well, as on ‘Baus ’93’. While it would prove to document the band in their latter years (they disbanded in 1996) the fire is evidently there in their hypnotic thrust and, no doubt, the howl and prowl of Mizutani, throwing down fiercely detuned electric guitar riffage under vox dematerialised by billowing reverb. Typically opening with rock ’n roll swagger of ‘The Night, Assassin’s Night’, they hew to a tormented, swooning blues blown-out with amp worship distortion in ‘Romance of the Black Pain otherwise Fallin’ Love With’, and full drag your messed up ass by hips with the steaming velocity of ‘1993 / Reapers of the Night_1993’, up to its mind-shredding crescendo. A 20’ iteration of ‘Darkness Returns’ is bound to see heads off with its ceaseless traction and Mizutani switching between tortured howl and a knife-whirl guitar dervish that regularly sees him hailed among the C.20th’s most distinctive axe-wielders and poets of noise.

Colour 2LP (5)