KOENJI HYAKKEI

2001 PROGRESSIVE-ROCK/EXPERIMENTAL-ROCK/ZEUHL 

Nivraym is the third album from Japanese songsmith Tatsuya Yoshida’s progressive project Kōenji Hyakkei. On stormy nights when I can hear the wind blow through tree branches and errant trash roll through the streets I often lay awake. During the most recent of these I found myself thinking of Kōenji Hyakkei. What would possess a band to make the music they do? The masterfully played instruments, complex and seemingly improvised compositions, and vocals that lie anywhere between nightmare and cartoon delivered in a fictitious language of long-winded words. My, and I imagine everyone’s reaction upon first listen is shock, whether it’s due to being drowned in nonsensical sounds or struggling to recover from the initial maddening punch to the face. I think all can agree it’s unlike anything heard before or since, and that is precisely what makes it so sick.

Well, not quite unlike anything else, the group was formed as a tribute to “zeuhl”. The most micro of the micro-genres, a term coined by the band Magma to describe their own brand of space-opera prog-rock paired with their self-invented alien language Kobaïan. Go ahead, try to think of something more pretentious. The funny thing is I don’t care for Magma, they make okay prog tunes in the style of many other acts from the seventies with their main selling point being their famed fictitious vernacular, but it’s so close to German I question what it accomplishes other than fulfilling the bands own nerdy linguistic urges.

Yes, Kōenji are similar but they differ in the right ways. Their bombastic and ever shifting sonic landscapes give the nonsense words more purpose, it takes the tunes from eccentric to otherworldly. In case it’s not obvious this record is as fantastic as it is fantastical. Dazzling the mind with its ceaseless barrage of maximalism that no psychedelic experience can compare to. You could say it’s like a rollercoaster but this ride does not obey the laws of physics. Do note that there will be no discussion of lyrics and all tracks will be referred to by their number, titles like Lussesoggi Zomn just don’t seem to roll off the tongue for whatever reason. 

As such we begin with track one and are met with the vocals, femme and masculine that sound like mythical chants. When combined with the synths they transform into a cult of the moon venerating an obelisk that is one part idol, one part intergalactic gate. The instrumental is as hectic as you expect from my prior depictions but at one point it drops out for disorienting free-jazz before miraculously circling back to its original concept. The second track is really where the weirdo rocket takes off. The vocals are even more frenetic and the tempo matches as it rushes up, falls down, and slowly climbs a crystalline staircase suspended in the endless cosmos. After these first introductory moments you can see the band’s songwriting approach, cram as many cool ideas as they can fit into a single cohesive string and give it a name.

Track three deviates from that slightly with its individual concepts getting more screen time resulting in a longer runtime. The first is an unexpected one with the sharp pitter patter of piano to lounge stylings. Vocals creep in softly and grow more and more deranged until breaking out into a back and forth of maniacal howls. Unfortunately things get normal near the halfway point with a guitar solo a suburban dad would like and an elongated piece of chill riffing that comes off more like the band is burning time for someone to get into tune than anything else. As the song fades into silence there is a significant pause, for this record at least, it’s eerie despite being only a few seconds then bam, track four comes barreling through the window fire spewing from its mouth and its inordinate limbs flailing wildly. It bounds from one nightmare to the next like a fun house hallway lined with doors each one offering insight into the strange and terrifying. Eventually there is a calm but beneath its jazzy spasms you can feel the boiling of its infernal blood, you can guess where this is headed and yet the next track subverts the new normal.

Track five opens all bubbly like an animated go-kart race where the horizon’s colors are sharper than you thought possible and each turn thrillingly close to disaster. As with nearly every song in the listing the finish is an amped up summation, mashing all its elements into a whirlwind that plays a step faster; the one here is especially perplexing, which is good of course. For me it’s around this point in the album that its biggest flaw starts to set in, fatigue. There are no breaks, no atmospheric interludes, and hardly a moment’s silence. There are a few short sections where the action isn’t quite as thick but nothing that helps to alleviate exhausted eardrums, and at just over fifty-eight minutes it’s not a short album either. I can see a lot of people, even those who adore it, needing to step away in the middle and there is nothing wrong with that, go ahead enjoy a walk, it’s not going anywhere. Especially considering what you are about to wade back into on the sixth track. Yes, more spastic sequences. Between raining notes and feminine wails it’s pretty familiar but magnificent nonetheless. The inevitable transition to the odd takes place this time to jazz-funk with choppy guitars. It doesn’t slide all that well back to its original concept but it’s still undeniably cool.

What the hell is with track seven? In my quest for the most concise way to describe it I came up with experimental demon worshiper jazz-fusion. The vocals are the focal point with freakish inflections and jarring twists that make it feel like watching an Italian horror movie in fast-forward. Quick cuts are also a frequent guest on the eighth track. Barbaric bursts of noise come down in rhythmic intervals to make way for a siren’s calls. There’s so much more going on here and on all the tracks but to describe every progression would turn this review into a novel but know that the movement from the grandiose center piece to each brief tangent is as captivating as the last; like the synth freak-out near its finish or the dazzling ascending and descending notes that follow. The spectacle just does not end. The closer begins playfully and has me thinking this might take on an entirely different tone, leading the record out on fluorescent clouds of bliss, but no, the band has plenty of bewildering percussion and guitar left in them. In the last thirty seconds they deliver a send off only appropriate for them, a farewell fanfare at times ten speed. 

Nivraym is so chaotic, so insane and on such a constant basis that only so many superlatives exist that can be used to describe it, and these repeated words do not do justice for what comes through your ears. All music transcends language but this album especially, perhaps that is why they use fictitious speech. No known expression could compete with their mystifying rhythms so there was little choice but to make up some that could. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve listened to Nivraym but on each trip I find something new that wows me, makes me think “oh my god that is wonderful”. There are not many greater feelings than that. 

8-9/10

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