Double LP
For a band with no official recordings there aint half a lot of official recordings kicking about these days... I was initially skeptical of the need for another Les Rallizes Denudes live record - that's all there are, and there are a lot of them, now all having been granted an estate-backed release and in quick succession, too. For sure it's not cheap being an LRD fan. And while they forever remain an incredible, totemic act, there weren't really that many songs in the catalogue - am i right in counting less than 20? The case, then, for a record like YaneUra Oct. 80 doesn't lie with the songs themselves, but how they're been played. This performance from Shibuya, October 1980 is most notable for introducing guitarist Fujio Yamaguchi, a union that would only last seven performances over a single year, but what a union it is, as Mizutani and Yamaguchi go toe-to-toe here in pursuit of untrammeled guitar nirvana. This is a 90 minute set and there are just six songs, so you get the idea, the early one-two of 'I'm The Darkness' and 'Flame of Ice' particularly raging, their collective 12 strings ringing with an unparalleled sharpness - skin splices at their very sound. And the proceeding 'Enter The Mirror' is a balm by comparison, and probably the track April Magazine are thinking about when they cite them as an influence. Though it can sometimes feel odd that a band that existed for so long didn't actually ever make it into the studio, YaneUra Oct. 80 does make sense of that curiosity: music of this nature doesn't have a definitive form, always out there alive finding a new shape.
Les Rallizes Denudes - YaneUra Oct.’80
£52.00
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