Kawabata Makoto makes the electric guitar sound like it's been around for a thousand years. When you combine his frantic drone riffing with whatever processing he places in the signal path, the distinctive tone that emerges stretches back before Hendrix, before Les Paul, before electricity-- back to a time when people worshipped the sun and lived according to the rhythms of the earth. I hear baroque organs, clanging percussion and primitive stringed instruments churning inside his tone. To listen to Makoto's guitar is to understand psychedelic music's ultimate goal of timelessness.
Makoto formed Tsurubami in 1994 with bassist Higashi Hiroshi (who would later join him in Acid Mothers Temple) and drummer Emi Nobuko, who were fellow members of his in the pre-Acid Mothers band Tenkyo No To. Recently, the trio reunited to record as a band again-- and now, following a string of CD-R releases, comes Gekkyukekkaichi, their highest profile album to date.
Though billed as a partnership of equals, there's no questioning that Tsurubami Makoto's show. On these two very long tracks, his massive guitar sound swells to fill all available space. Hiroshi's bass is essentially inaudible, and Nobuko's drumming provides minimal tone color, rising and falling according to the dictates of Makoto's guitar flights. Gekkyukekkaichi is a drone record completely; each track hinges on variations in space, volume and timbre, with little melody or rhythm. During the long passages of balls-out energy riffing (which can easily last five or more minutes), it's easy to forget that you're even listening to a guitar/bass/drums trio at all-- the music quickly takes on the character of unnamable abstract noise.
"Gekkyukekkaichi", the first of the record's two tracks, runs about 24 minutes, and has the structure and predictability of an erupting volcano: A calm and lyrical introduction by Makoto, dense with his characteristic sense of harmony, is the calm wisp of smoke snaking upward from the mountaintop. Makoto's guitar soon settles into a throbbing drone, but around the 10-minute mark, the track explodes with wall-to-wall guitar texture that occasionally breaks back down into moments of tranquility.
"Seiitenrinengi" (which, at 37 minutes, makes "Gekkyukekkaichi" seem like a pop single) follows a similar structure, interspersing extended passages of subtle spaciousness with heavy metal-on-metal guitar abuse. Here, Nobuko's drums become an extension of the otherworldly guitar, with exploding cymbals and chaotic fills mirroring Makoto's movements. Makoto's instrument emits a wide spectrum of color throughout the entire record, but at the length of "Seiitenrinengi" I can feel the absence of the variety that Acid Mothers brings. Some of these breakdowns would sound better with the addition of other instruments.
Both of Gekkyukekkaichi's tracks are completely improvised, and you get the very real sensation while listening that the band is embarking on an epic journey that we're free to join. Despite the extreme length and constraints of the three-piece setup, these tracks rarely get boring. It can be difficult to make room in life for heroic \xBE hour guitar excursions, but when you get the time, Kawabata Makoto is your man.
