Kikagaku Moyo Stone Garden, Fitness Forever Tonight
Kikagaku Moyo
Stone Garden
(Guruguru Brain)
The Tokyo-based quintet Kikagaku Moyo draws heavily from psychedelic rock but also channels elements from German Krautrock, hippie jams and Indian music, intending to evoke the supernatural with freely flowing songs that emerge from basic structures.
The songs on the 5-song EP Stone Garden were born from sessions in Prague that were later chiseled into recreatable pieces back home in Tokyo, with improvisation being both a tool for composition and a way to keep things alive and spontaneous.
There’s a basic, primal feeling to several of these tracks, and on Stone Garden, the overall vibe is more important than structural complexity.The stirring, opening track “Backlash” is an aggressive number, harshly recorded in the red with severely fuzzed-out guitar tones, perhaps like the aural equivalent of a space shuttle re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. Minimal patterns on guitar and drums are pounded into the ground with sparks flying off in all directions, almost completely obscuring a faint organ in the background.
For the next song, “Nobakitani,” Kakagaku Moyo goes for a completely different sensibility, wandering peacefully with acoustic guitars and Indian flavors from a sitar.
“Trilobites” offers hazy guitar wankery, while “In a Coil” perhaps resembles Can’s “Mother Sky” if it was a little faster and cheery rather than menacing; it’s a driving track with a minimal Holger Czukay-esque bass line and spirited melodic vocal murmuring and harmonizing.
The EP ends with “Floating Leaf,” serving up watery, cascading echoes and a groove that unfortunately ends too soon—at four minutes long, it could have easily been twice as long, continuing with its exploratory feel and sustained energy. Those who seek prog-rock complexity may be underwhelmed here, but for fans of psychedelic rock (think Acid Mothers Temple) who connect on a more nebulous level, Kikagaku Moyo is worth checking out.
Fitness Forever
Tonight
(Elefant)
Revivalism is not going to go away, and this writer wholeheartedly advocates listeners seeking out and understanding the sources of such tributes, plagiarism or appropriation (or whatever you want to call it).
That said, this critic thinks there’s a good rule to follow: if you’re going to do it, really go for it.
Be dedicated enough to the point where the music provides an overwhelming escapist pleasure, forcing the listener to forget the present and to step into another era and world.
Only a small fraction of such releases hit this high water mark—Fancey’s remarkable ‘70s-obsessed Love Mirage comes to mind—and now there’s the third album, Tonight, from the Italian group Fitness Forever to add to the list.
Averaging one album every four years, Fitness Forever takes its sweet time, and earlier releases concentrate on bouncy, nostalgic pop with a few diversions into disco territory, like “Se Come Te” from 2009’s Personal Train and the title track of 2013’s Cosmos.
However, on Tonight, Fitness Forever is all-in with Italian disco revivalism with spotless string and brass arrangements and high production values that one might not expect on an indie release.Joining band leader Carlos Valderrama and cohorts are several guest artists, including Vincent Mougel (from Kidsaredead), Paulita Demaíz (from the Spanish pop duo Papa Topo) and French singer Anna Jean from the group Juniore.
The opening salvo of “Tonight” and “Dance Boys” kicks down the door and creates an instant party, followed by “Canadian Ranger” that seemingly condenses about half of Abba Gold into a five-minute song. Unabashed saxophone solos (like on “Cosa Mi Hat Detto”) and keyboards that hint at Italo-disco coexist with flawless string and brass runs.
Tonight may appeal to fans of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, and it makes the listener forget the question, “Why does this even need to exist?” It exists for you to enjoy, right now.