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Kimio Mizutani
A Path Through Haze
Therapeutic Records THR-1001
LP
£19.99
1971 solo LP, the only album that Japanese guitar god Kimio Mizutani (Uganda/Love Live Life +1 et al) cut as a leader. Here he heads a big band that also features keyboardist Kuni Kawachi and pianist Masahiko Satoh. Julian Cope has a blind-spot for this album in Japrocksampler - but then he dissed the Brush LP, so go figure... I picked it up when it came out on CD years ago in Japan and I still dig it. It mostly consists of delicate orchestral arrangements blown to pieces by Mizutani’s fuzztone lead guitar, generating the kind of surreal headspace that would meld operatic Eastern sonorities with outside garage punk stylings and progressive jazz. If it hardly put Mizutani on the map, it still stands as one of the weirdest marriages of Japanese chamber music and endless distorto guitar ever sunk by a major label. This reissue comes in a replica sleeve and on heavy vinyl. Another fascinating slice of Japanese underground rock history.
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