Les Rallizes Dénudés returns with Disque 4 -’76 Studio et Live-, the latest in the ongoing series of official archival releases from the celebrated Japanese underground band. Pre-orders for LP and CD are available now on Temporal Drift’s Bandcamp page. Now streaming is “White Awakening,” recorded in 1976 at the studio in Takadanobaba BIG BOX as part of the sessions that would become known among collectors as the “Virgin Demos.”
In 1991 Les Rallizes Dénudés released three titles on CD that ultimately ended up being the only official albums to be released in the band’s lifetime: ’67-’69 STUDIO et LIVE, MIZUTANI / Les Rallizes Dénudés, ’77 LIVE. What no one knew at the time was that Takashi Mizutani was deep into the process of readying another album.
Prepared using a variety of formats, including U-Matic, open reel, and DAT, the tracks were labeled with working titles such as “Disque 4” and “Record No. 4,” indicating that Mizutani was collecting these materials for a possible fourth album. Furthermore, his notes suggest an attempt to sequence the tracks in a vinyl LP format, splitting them into A and B sides with around 20 minutes per side.
It also became evident that the tracks, primarily gathered from studio sessions taken from multiple sources, all appeared to be recordings from around 1976. This aligns with claims that Mizutani himself had made, hinting at the fact that “there exists another album, besides the three released albums, consisting of studio recordings made with the same members as ‘77 LIVE.” However, in the early 1990s, just as CDs were becoming the dominant format of music media, it's not hard to imagine that releasing the album as an analog LP would have been extremely difficult to achieve. Thus, the “Fourth Album” became another lost piece of the intricate Rallizes myth.
Disque 4 -’76 Studio et Live- reconstructs the track list Mizutani had prepared for the fourth album, excluding “Hibiscus Flower,” which was included on Jittoku ’76. Production and mastering were handled once again by Makoto Kubota, assembling the album from the masters left behind by Mizutani, utilizing newly discovered tapes as additional sources.
Les Rallizes Dénudés may be notorious for the colossal volume and extended song lengths in their live settings. But this work, centered around studio recordings and condensed onto a single LP record, transcends the common impression of the band’s aggressive flood of noise. Instead, the “lyricism” at its core emerges with striking clarity. And needless to say, this is precisely the charm of the Rallizes that continues to captivate fans worldwide today.
