Review Summary: Sign me for my All-Expenses-Paid Weekend Getaway to Kumoyo Island!
Yet another album, had it not been for other users and reviewers’ recommendations, that would have completely slipped under my release radar. Kikagaku Moyo is a Japanese psychedelic/folky/bluesy project akin to modern day Australian heroes King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard whilst also harkening back to an era of music pioneered by Blue Cheer, Pink Floyd and even the likes of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. While taking inspiration and influence from these other bands, its very clear that Kikagaku Moyo are their own quirky fusion of sounds that toss out any notion of formula and create music for the sake of creating music.
Similarly to jam bands of the 60’s and 70’s, Kikagaku Moyo’s instrumentals feel like spur of the moment, whimsical ideas that were recorded during a band practice. In no way does this compliment mean to sound negative; in fact, I feel like if bands spent more time trusting their initial instincts rather than producing, rewriting and layering, they would create better, more emotionally satisfying music. These Japanese talents have a knack for eliciting from each other fantastic and unique ideas for music and bouncing these individual efforts off of each other, creating super vibey, eccentric songs.
Kumoyo Island’s first track “Monaka” feels like it could have easily been off one of KG’s more psychedelic albums. The lyricism is bouncy and catchy and while I don’t speak or read Japanese in any shape or form, I do feel like the timbre of the vocalist’s delivery offers carefree, sun-soaked vibes where a beach party would be the idea location for this song to play. One of my favorite tracks “Dancing Blue” follows it up and features a more progressive, slower approach featuring subtle guitar licks and unique instrumental pieces.
The middle of this record is accentuated with more dreamy, quaint tracks and instrumental bops that really compliment that lackadaisical yet entrancing vocal delivery. Tracks like “Meu Mar” and “Cardboard Pile” offer some moments of more aggressive instrumentation coupled with breaks in the flow to over some quieter flowy bits. “Daydream Soda” has more of a dreamy quality, and it’s followed up by a short minute and a half guitar centric track in “Field of Tiger Lilies” which ends up being one of my highlights for the record because it feels so focused and impassioned and just a great ‘let-loose’ kind of moment on the LP.
The back half of the track-listing is just as good as the front and middle sections whether it be the slow progression of “Yayoi, Iyayoi” which features some of the most emotional and powerful guitar work on the back half of the seven-minute song. This is followed up with the lovely and flowery “Nap Song” in which the title implies the setting in which this song would be best suited for. It’s so lazily dizzying and dreamy in the best way possible. This is however followed up by my least favorite track on the LP, “Maison Silk Road.” It’s kind of jarring to feature a really slow, beautiful track like “Nap Song” and then immediately end the album with a sort of ambient, slow-moving, entrancing track that’s six and a half minutes long. While its not a bad song by any means and definitely fits in the scope of this quirky album, I didn’t feel like it was a great ending track and is in even a worse position by being placed directly after another slow track.
Overall, this thing is excellent and while I might have reservations about how it ends, it’s still a very lovely and enjoyable record front-to-back. I highly recommend for fans of the bands listed in the first paragraph. I’d like to visit Kumoyo Island because it sounds like a hell of a fun place to chill.
Top Tracks:
“Yayoi, Iyayoi”
“Nap Song”
“Dancing Blue”
“Field of Tiger Lilies”
“Meu Mar”
