Album Pick of the Year
04. Flower Travellin' Band Satori 1971 (Atlantic)
Hard Rock-Acid Rock
The land of the rising acid!
Overview
The Flower Travellin’ Band have already been mentioned in my “Also Check This Out……” section for 1970 and their debut album (a covers album) caused something of a stir, for both the band’s take on their chosen cover songs and also on the band appearing naked on motorbikes on the album cover. So when the band finally got around to recording their second album and their first of original material, it turned out to be something quite sensational! Here was a hard rock band from Japan, that sounded like Led Zeppelin meets King Crimson meets Blue Cheer all in a strange kind of way, does this sound confusing? If not it should! They then added their unique Japanese slant to the whole thing and usually sounded out of their heads as well. The band based their unique sound, around a spaced-out blues hard rock sound full of heavy guitar riffs and drumbeats. The band themselves had originally formed in the late 1960s as the Flowers and again their material was mostly covers and after various personnel changes, which saw the arrival of legendary vocalist Joe Yamanaka the line-up was complete. I say legendary, because his vocal style was unique and along with Damo Suzuki of Can, they were two Japanese vocalists of amazing talent. On their debut album
Anywhere, the band’s take on classic contemporary heavy tracks such as “Twentieth Century Schizoid Man” and “Black Sabbath” along with classic blues and blues rock numbers, showed that the band had considerable talent available to them in abundance.
Satori was recorded in April 1971 and would be the band’s first original album.
Satori would also be a groundbreaking album of its type and also totally unique with its almost hypnotic feel. I could’ve put this album in one of my add-on sections, but I always felt that despite the heavy proggy style elements, that this band were a hard rock band in soul. It just happened that this soul had been corrupted and led them to indulge in a trippy almost totally spaced-out brand of hard rock, making this album completely different to anything already featured on my top ten lists. As a footnote, the album didn’t get a North American release until 1988 and checking around on how influential this band were, it’s amazing how many other bands have covered their stuff over the years, ranging from modern day post-rock, hardcore, thrash and progressive bands!
Joe Yamanaka- Vocals
Hideki Ishima- Guitar
Jon Kuzuki- Bass
Joji ‘George’ Wada- Drums
Production- Okuzo Orita
Album
Satori Pt.1- Starts off with some high pitched whining and the jingling of bells before a cry and bursting into a King Crimson style beat, before the whole thing jumps again into a to and fro between the KC beat and a serious up-tempo kick-butt riff. These two contrasting aspects dominate the whole song and are highlighted by Yamanaka’s wailing cry.
Satori Pt.2- More laid back in essence than the opening track and here vocalist Yamanaka sings ‘the sun shines everyday etc.’ and it’s almost like the guitars are singing along with him, before the whole song emerges into an lengthy intense instrumental.
Satori Pt.3- With its subdued intro before jumping up a volume notch, the song now has that distinctive Eastern sound unique to the band and heavily pierced by a guitar. This 10 minute song then enters a more familiar blues based section, before switching to more experimental flavours and then into its galloping final section.
Satori Pt.4- One of the best tracks on the album and also the longest. The groovy intro to this song alone wins it and Yamanaka actually makes more of an attempt to sing here as well, and comes across a la Hendrix against the backdrop of that thumping beat! The band show their love of American blues with the harmonica and this is definitely the most blues based track on the album.
Satori Pt.5- With its more menacing feel, this song is the perfect finale to the whole
Satori album offering and yet again Yamanaka doesn’t actually need to sing, his constant wailing and Hideki Ishima’s guitar licks are enough to satisfy, before the whole thing bows out Japanese style.
Verdict
Basically the album sounds like one big fu
cked up acid trip, with some bluesy bits where the band mellow out a bit, and when Joe Yamanaka manages to sing, he sounds totally out of it as always. The album in many ways, is kind of a final twisted sounding goodbye to the ‘flower power brigade’ of the 1960s and all its trappings! This is a band that have meshed a whole load of eclectic sounds and styles from their own Eastern Japanese perspective, by using western musical traits and then infusing their own unique identity into these songs as well. But what keeps this album balanced and relatively easy on the ear, is that the whole thing is constantly underpinned with simplistic but dominant hard rock riffs! I would say to any heavy metal or hard rock fan out there, that likes his/her music straight-up and solid sounding, to probably give this a wide berth. But if hard rock with instrumentals and a trippy psychedelic slant are your thing then dive right in, as this is a forgotten classic, that easily gives over to repeated listens as it’s that good! The album was immediately seen as important in its native Japan, but was only destined to become a cult classic in the main musical centres of North America and the UK, but its fame has grown over the years. The King Crimson “Twentieth Century Schizoid Man” influence seems to pop up all around this album, more so than some of the Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin comparisons that were laid at their door around this time. These bands can of course be heard from time to time, but are quickly forgotten in the grand scheme of things once the Flower Travellin’ Band get going, I find it amazing, that the band managed to include their frenetic intense sound in an album that lasts just 32 minutes! (I guess Slayer took note of this for
Reign in Blood!) This album is so good, that Joe Yamanaka doesn’t even need to sing that much to impress us, his constant wailing like some demented Samurai warrior is enough to keep the listener interested throughout. After this album, the band would be invited to Canada to record the excellent
Made in Japan album the following year (will be on my 1972 list for sure) But they would never quite do anything as unique as
Satori ever again.