Thursday, March 1, 2007

KIYOHIKO SENBA AND HIS HANIWA ALL STARS-HANIWA, LP, 1983 + IN CONCERT, CD, 1991, JAPAN








Henry Kaiser's comments about this insane dada avant-pop orchestra are probably the best way to preface any discussion of their work:

"Mr. Senba seems to be one of the most successful studio drummers in Tokyo. I sure hope that he is very successful, as I'm sure that the music copyist bills alone of the Haniwa Allstars would bankrupt most small businesses. There are about one hundred people in this band. All on stage at once. 5 or six drummers. A big horn section. A huge section of traditional Japanese instrumentalists. A dozen vocalists. All dressed in pajamas and nurses uniforms. Many of the members are big pop and/or jazz stars in Japan. Senba is the writer-arranger-conductor-madman behind this band. I suppose that the only person that you might compare Senba to in America, in terms of scale of ambition, is Frank Zappa. (Although Senba's music has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Zappa or his musical interests.) Senba is spectacularly successful with his truly insane, giant, all style-encompassing musical vision. It's too bad you will never ever see this release in any American record shop. Too bad that we are so culture-bound over here."

What Henry's leaving out here is any mention of just how utterly brain warping all of this sounds. Senba and his All Stars are lunacy of herculean proportions and a screaming peak of the Japanese pop avant garde. I know of one collector of experimental music who's arguably amongst the world's biggest and who considers them to be his all time favorite band! Of these two, "Haniwa" sits just a smidge higher for me insofar as the studio processing (worthy of Wha Ha Ha) lacquered on top of this already sublime nuttiness pushes things to a nearly supernatural threshold of weirdness, but they're both capable of causing slackjawed amazement and drooling upon initial exposure...

Get "Haniwa" Here

Get "In Concert" Here

***NOTE: THERE ARE MIRRORED MEDIAFIRE LINKS IN THE COMMENT FIELD***

18 comments:

Unknown said...

Since you seem to have a nice selection of Japanese works, I put in requests for:

Nord - LSD
Nord - 3 / Ego Trip
Nord - Live Materials 1980-1993

Merzbow with Nord/Live Performance 84.2.5. at ????

Merzbow+Null+Nord/Live Performance 84.5.25.At Yokohama citizen gallery
Myriaden Von Hauugeflufelten and Puppen V.A

Unknown said...

Since you seem to have a nice selection of Japanese works, I put in requests for:

Nord - LSD
Nord - 3 / Ego Trip
Nord - Live Materials 1980-1993

Merzbow with Nord/Live Performance 84.2.5. at ????

Merzbow+Null+Nord/Live Performance 84.5.25.At Yokohama citizen gallery
Myriaden Von Hauugeflufelten and Puppen V.A

Unknown said...

V intrigued by this, thanks for posting it!

Anonymous said...

Tracklisting & other information :

http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~sarvana/mishio4e.htm

Joe Seph

Anonymous said...

Great version of Akatere by Wah Ha Ha on the 'In Concert' record. Really cool hearing it in a totally different context - from sparse and choppy to enormous and fluid.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the KIYOHIKO SENBA albums. I was really looking forward to these but unfortunately the haniwa lp archive is corrupt. any body else having this same problem?
Please couls you repost the KIYOHIKO SENBA.zip file.
thanks
P.A.U.

vdoandsound said...

John-My...are you ever prescient! My plan for tomorrow was...guess what? Posting Nord material!
The only two titles from your requests that I have are L.S.D. and Ego Trip, which go up tomorrow...

Interesting to know that there's a Wha Ha Ha cover on "In Concert". I'll have to go back and compare them...

P.A.U.-I just downloaded and played the "Haniwa" with no problem. I dunno...

Over The Moon said...

Use WinZip and it should extract fine.

Anonymous said...

Awesome. Thanks again.

Clearer cover art: http://www.geocities.jp/go4block/yori/disc/28AH1557.jpg

Shane said...

Hmm...it's asking me for a password. That doesn't seem right.

Help? This looks fascinating.

vdoandsound said...

Shane...no idea...I certainly didn't password protect it...hmmmm...

ajf said...

I'm liking this...reminds me a lot of Shibusashirazu...

Anonymous said...

The reason why some people have problems unzipping the Haniwa file is because there is a space behind the directory "kiyohiko senba " inside the zipfile. If one removes this space using ones unzip tool it unzips fine. I guess it depends on the unzip tool one uses whether this causes problems or not.

By the way the Kiyohiko Senba posts are really great. Thanks!

vdoandsound said...

ajf-thanks a bunch for the recommendation. Shibusashirazu is one I was unaware of before now. Reading up on it, it sounds like it's going to be amazing!

mutantsounds said...

shibusashirazu lp coming tommorow:)

Anonymous said...

ok, i'm also having problems with these zip files. could somebody explain more precisely what to do with them (they won't open displaying a 'corrupt file message')
tried some 100 times. it's a major bugger...

Anonymous said...

winzip is the key - i had all that password stuff & tried using other unzippers. winzip does it no problems.

Anonymous said...

These have been down for a while and I never got to downloaded them so I made new sets from the CDs and put them on MediaFire:

Haniwa (1983)

In Concert (1991)