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VASILISK - Whirling Dervishes

Format: LP
Label & Cat.Number: Steinklang SK77
Release Year: 2014
Note: re-mastered re-issue of the very first VASILISK LP from 1987 (Eskimo Rec. Japan) - a true collectors item, the perfect link between post-industrial, ethno and soft ambience; lim. 150 copies on coloured vinyl, containing one rare bonus-track
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €20.00


More Info

"Reissue of Japanese tribal/industrial pioneers, released back in 1987 on Eskimo Records. Originally recorded and mixed in Tokyo from December '86 to March '87 now remastered with additional bonus track. Comes on transparent purple vinyl, limited to 150 copies." [label info]

www.steinklang-records.at



"An eccentric proposition, Vasilisk's Whirling Dervishes (1987) was the group's first album after Tomo Kuwahara and Jun Konagaya dissolved their politically charged noise/punk unit White Hospital. Konagaya kept screaming against the sky with his aptly named industrial project Grim; and Kuyahara turned inward with the ritual-industrial outfit Vasilisk. Through the connections back to White Hospital, Vasilisk had often been associated with the Japanese noise community even as their aesthetic steered clear of the aktionist bloodletting, dada nihilism, and junkyard brutalism found in every other Japanese noise outfit. Swaddled in lush reverberation and acoustic drones, Vasilisk's hypnotic, tribal percussion and occasional psych-folk jams offer a direct link to the holy minimalism of the Taj Mahal Travellers, Angus Maclise, and John Cale through the magickal liturgies of the British industrial practitioners (e.g. PTV's Themes, 23 Skidoo, Masstishaddhu, etc.) and looking forward to the pine-cone drones of the more shambolic artists from the Y2K freak-folkers (e.g. Avarus, Sunroof!, Toho Sara, etc.). The album's title track is a 22 minute excursion built up from a fundamental drone with interlocking hand-drummed rhythms punctuated by lysergically bellowed Kecak-like vocalizations, low-key Kosmische guitar work, and circular breathing chants. The shorter program pieces which flesh out the album operate mostly along those lines with the power-tool blur and militant staccato of "Bricks" and the cagey, whispered rendition of Suzanne Vega's "Cracking" (sounding more like Current 93, mind you) as the furthest axis points for Vasilisk's sensibility for miasma drone and opiated psychedelia. This reissue on Steinklang is completed with Vasilisk's contribution to RRRecord's Noise And Junk Omnibus overview of late '80s / early '90s Japanese noise - a track called "The Ritual Mask." [Aquarius Records]