Hiro Yanagida "Milk Time" (1970)

Exactly the dawn of Japanese improvised organ-based psychedelic progressive rock! (I believe 'another' dawn of Japanese organ-based psych-prog should be The Happenings Four.)

Their core storm gets started with the second track Running Shirts Long ... don't be deceived by the beauty of Hiro's keyboard solo in the short opening Love St. ... each instrumental solo gets exploded heavily and rampantly.

And please carefully listen to Hiro's keyboard play especially - although his solo play goes forward at a moment on the latter part, basically Hiro should support the other solos with his strict (and deep) rhythm on the background.

Their terrific heavy improvisation on the middle part absolutely, absolutely reminds me Acid Mothers Temple Speed Guru's exploded guitar solo in the song Acid Takion. Makoto Kawabata might be much influenced by Hiro's improvised heavy keyboard play (here's a difference of instruments between them though) I imagine? Kimio Mizutani's crazy guitar solo can make their sounds more aggressive, and Hiroki Tamaki's sharp-edged electric violin can season their style with extremely dry and bitter soundspice. Just in the song can we feel such a greatness of all instruments, all players.

Anyway dart a glance around - in this album is flute-based soft and graceful fairy-tale song like When She Didn't Agree and Yum, a short instrumental track Love T with plaintive violin sounds blended with solemn keyboard ones, or a jazzy freaky flexible jam session Happy, Sorry.

And another peak of this album is, I'm sure, the miracle suite Fish Sea Milk / Fingers Of A Red Type-Writer. Based on such a weird keyboard rumble, Kimio's crushed guitar, Hiroki's keen electroviolin, Nozomi's loud flute, Kenji & Hiro Tsunoda's deep rhythm section can fall one upon another. We cannot close our mouth and close our eyes till the end of Me And Milk And Others, the song characterized as a slow percussion and violin inferno.

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Love St. (0:00)

2. Running Shirts Long (0:54)

3. When She Didn't Agree (9:37)

4. Happy, Sorry (10:51)

5. Yum (16:46)

6. Love T (20:36)

7. Fish Sea Milk (22:13)

8. Fingers Of A Red Typewriter (24:37)

9. Milk Time (33:06)

10. Me And Milk Tea And Others (33:39)

Milk Time - Hiro Yanagida (1970) Full album. 

Line-up / Musicians

- Hiro Yanagida / organ, harpsichord

- Kimio Mizutani / guitars

- Hiro Tsunoda / drums

- Hiroki Tamaki / electric violin

- Keiju Ishikawa / bass

- Nozomi Nakatani / flute