Miminokoto / Live

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Miminokoto comes out of the PSF tradition of overdriven guitar damage, but what this trio does is more primitive than High Rise or White Heaven. Guitarist/vocalist Masami Kawaguchi (of the legendary Broomdusters) probably has an appreciation for Michio Kurihara though, not to mention Haino of Fushitsusha. What he does throughout the course of the seven songs of Live is rapturous in terms of no-wave informed garage punk psych string torture. The shitty-fidelity of the recording (live albums don't suck!) may detract for some, but for me it only further reinforces the purity of the vision. His band is no slouch either, with Koji Shimura (High Rise, White Heaven, Mainliner) on drums and Takuya Nishimura of Che-SHIZU on bass. It's all good, but what keeps drawing me in over and over is Kawaguchi's primal string work which repeatedly amazes in a way that will appeal to fans of virtuall every group mentioned in this review.
-Lee Jackson, Broken Face #18

Miminokoto are a relatively new band in the Tokyo scene of leftfield post-Les Rallizes Denudes rock groups that are inspired by, or are in some way connected to, Keiji Haino or Asahito Nanjo's High Rise. Their music is more earthbound than that of those two characters, but is also stranger in its way. Miminokoto's strangeness wastes no time in announcing its presence, though its precise character is somewhat elusive. It took me many listens before I could discern what it was about this band that was so striking to me. Something clearly seems amiss as singer/guitarist Masami Kawaguchi peels through the opening slashes of "Tottemo," a tune which in no way telegraphs what direction it might be headed in. But amiss something must be, as the typically rock-like pieces make thier presence felt just long enough to fall away and leave a skeleton of a rock song hanging in its place. The players' looseness combines with the songs' dramatic scorch to give even the relatively mellow ballads a stirring tension. In Miminokoto's songs, empty spaces gape in between notes, which are filled instead with an implaceable (yet invigorating and appropriate) awkwardness and melancholy. Kawaguchi's white-hot guitar solos are half the reason to hear this album. His instrument sounds alternately like the angular slash of Gang of Four, complete with missing notes which disorient a song's sense of forward-propulsion, and like Mizutani Takashi of Les Rallizes Denudes' ceiling-scorching fuzz. When he steps on that distortion pedal, he comes in at twice the volume of the rest of the band and obliterates all other sound. The rest of the music's pieces don't fit comfortably together, with bass and drums (played by Takuya Nishimura and Koji Shimura, formerly of High Rise, White Heaven, Che-Shizu, Fushitsisha, and every other band in my record collection) ducking below and weaving around the guitar and voice. The tunes are charged and unstable, sounding as if they are either about to break apart or else are at the edge of never starting in the first place. Kawaguchi's distinctive voice hardly seems to land on a melody, groaning in the places where singing should go. It's a miracle that Miminokoto pulls this off, but they sure do. They sound at places like a bleary Trapdoor Fucking Exit-era Dead C., but then along comes a muscular riff that attempts to pull the music off the floor, only to waver around in fractured noise, keeping itself upright by leaning heavily on a table. Even the ballads threaten to fall to dust, and half-asleep improvised clutter gathers in messy clumps. "Live" is a startling album, leaving me to wonder about its strangeness for days afterward.
- Howard Stelzer, The Brainwashed Brain

Last Visible Dog brings us the first US release for this Tokyo-based trio, a self-described 'romantic psychedelic band'. Recorded live at Tokyo's Penguin House back in January of this year, this disc starts off with a raucous tangle-jangle of bright garagey guitars ("Tottemo"), followed by a melancholic pop dirge that then erupts into sky-scraping psych guitar overload ("Subeteha"). The rest of the set follows a similar pattern, juxtaposing the quiet and folky with the loud and shrill. You'll get a song that features mopey Japanese vocals over jazzily listless instrumental backing, that'll be followed by piece built around some severe, noisy guitar rockin' and crashing drums. Often one thing builds into the other, which is quite satisfying. Definitely a 'Tokyo Flashback' style band, for fans of Shizuka, Nagisa Ni Te, White Heaven, Kousokuya, all that sort of thing!
--Aquarius Records

Rising from the ashes of Tokyo Velvets obsessives and Keiji Haino collaborators Broomdusters, Miminokoto are a more immediately auraless proposition. Their dynamic blues constructions are held together by taut, clean guitar lines coiling and snapping around a rhythm section that's liable to alter course in mid-air. The hopping patterns beaten out by Ex-White Heaven bassist and drummer Koji Shimura anchor Kawaguchi's machine gun guitar, which stutters in a polyglot tongue drawing equally from Rory Gallagher, Jerry Garcia and Lou Reed. But Kawaguchi's remarkable vocal most defines Minokoto's sound, his distressed moan giving every track the urgency of deathbed blues. Recorded live in Tokyo in 2002, this album is a much needed corrective to their two patchy studio albums.
--The Wire (Jan, 2004)

Track listing:

1. tottemo
2. subeteha
3. wakaranai
4. doushite
5. tsuzukete
6. kikasete
7. 2330

Masumi Kawaguchi: vocal, guitar
Takuya Nishimura: bass
Koji Shimura: drums