Les Rallizes Denudes
Blind Baby Has Its Mother's Eyes

5
...according to our Brett on 26 August 2010.

It feels like I've been waiting for these lads to come in for AGES. Bootlegs of bootlegs they may be, but Les Rallizes' stuff's only ever been available in bootleg form anyway as they were way too fucking cool and reclusive to even consider something so dull as an actual, proper and official album. If you've never heard them before they're pretty much the black-clad progenitors of the Velvet Underground-worshipping line of underground Japanese rock which would later include the likes of Fushitsusha and they took the super-loose, jammy, psych-noise-rock template about as far as it's possible to imagine it going way before anyone else had even thought about setting off. Expect swirling vortexes of feedback-strewn guitar howling, echoing vocal yelps, clanging, meandering and highly repetitive basslines and a truckload of nasty attitude for your money. That's got to be money well spent, no? In other news, I just went to buy ice creams and Ant managed to put his Cornetto away in literally about 80 seconds.

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What their label says...

"Massive slabs of distortion inhabit every seam of this monstrously linear album" Julian Cope. Japrocksampler

Legendary Japanese rock outfit Les Rallizes Denudes were formed in 1967 and incredibly for a group that had only one official release (Oz Days Live, a double vinyl compilation release in 1973), played their last gig almost 30 years later in October 1996. The band's name apparently means "fucked up and naked" which more than adequately describes their music. Formed by band leader Mizutani Takashi, the music remained remarkably familiar over the years, and is best described as high volume, raw lo-fi repetitive feedback-drenched guitar noise fests with nods in the direction of the Velvet Underground  and Blues Creation but without the electronics. Radical left wing politics was never far from the band's agenda, with one original band member (Wakabayashi) being involved in the Japanese Red Army's highjacking of a flight to North Korea.. Consequently, the group's live appearances became less frequent and increasingly clandestine. All the band's albums were released in very small quantities and because of the group's reputation for secrecy and violence, as well as the difficulty in tracking down their recordings, Les Rallizes Denudes has assumed almost mythical status.