Sometime around 1990 a friend who was a DJ on KPFA made me a tape of a band familiar to me only through a couple of songs on the Dead Tech compilation LP: High Rise. I'd heard far more about them at the time than by them, since both of their LPs were hopelessly out of print and in any case only a handful of copies ever made it out of their home country of Japan. The tape included both albums plus a few extra tracks, and if I hadn't known something about the band I would have figured he'd messed up the transfer since everything was so blown-out. I'd later learn that bassist/singer Nanjo Asahito was infamous for his mastering approach, which could be summed up as: make everything as loud as possible and compress the hell out of it.
High Rise is a difficult band to describe, because on paper it might not be anything special. They're a standard rock trio of guitar, bass, and drums, playing a heavy blend of psychedelic and biker rock. Take the early Nuggets-type fuzz rock, add MC5-style aggression, Ramones attitude, and you're getting there, except there are so many missing ingredients. Narita's guitar playing is like the most out-there wah-freak, free-form, chaotic lead guitar you've ever heard, times ten. Nanjo's muscular bass lines drive the songs forward during even the most anarchic moments, and his vocals, shadowy and reverbed, blend like another instrument. If there's a part of the band that's more prosaic it's the drums, perhaps partly due to the band's constantly-changing drummer slot, and partly due to the mixes, which often bury the drums.
At the time I hadn't yet come across the legendary Rallizes, aka Les Rallizes Denudes, aka Hadaka no Rallizes, perhaps the ur-psych band of Japan. Formed in the late 60s, their approach to free-form rock, with a murky sensibility and anarchic guitar, influenced scores of later bands, including High Rise. But High Rise took that inspiration and focused it through a motorcycle-punk filter that perfectly balanced that anarchy with control — the guitar may go insane, but it's controlled insanity.
The first time I toured Japan, in the early 1990s, we visited Modern Music, the Tokyo store run by PSF Records owner Hideo Ikeezumi. I was amazed to find a copy of the first High Rise LP, but not having a spare $300 on me I sadly wasn't able to bring it home. The following year PSF reissued the band's second album on CD, but that first one has yet to be properly reissued, though a couple of bootlegs (or at least questionable releases) exist.
A couple of years later I organized a show for Angel'in Heavy Syrup (a terrific psych band from Osaka) in Berkeley, and after sound check a Japanese fellow dressed in all-black, wearing sunglasses inside the club, came up to me and a friend. He had a mini-disc player with him, and handed me some headphones, saying "Listen!" I couldn't help but do so, and I heard some really good blown-out rock not unlike High Rise. I nodded, and said "Great", but that's about all the communication we managed at the time. I didn't know it at the time, but that was Nanjo Asahito.
Shortly thereafter I was back in Tokyo playing some shows again, and we were at La Mama, a club in Shibuya. A friend and I walked down the street to grab an iced coffee from one of Tokyo's omnipresent vending machines, and on the way back a very excited Nanjo — again in black with his shades on at night — waylaid us. Nanjo handed me a large manila envelope, and said "You release!" My meagre Japanese was worse than his English, but I opened the envelope and figured out that it had a master DAT tape and artwork for a CD by a band called Mainliner. That also happened to be the name of a song on High Rise's album Dispersion. Nanjo apparently wanted me to release the CD on my label, Charnel Music.
I nodded and said "Maybe I can release it", but Nanjo just smiled and said something like "You will", confident that I'd like it. Once I got home and listened to it I understood why he was so sure, since it was amazing stuff, but that was also very like Nanjo. I learned later that he considered the band to be the second version of High Rise, one that could tour since High Rise's guitarist Narita had a day job that didn't allow him much time off. The guitarist of Mainliner was an incredible maniac named Makoto Kawabata, whose own band Acid Mothers Temple released a CD the next year on PSF Records, completing the circle.
Mainliner came and toured the U.S. after the release of Mellow Out, and again in 1997 after Mainliner Sonic. Then in 1998 Nanjo came back to play some shows under other band names — he had a way back then of creating "bands" almost on the fly, based on a vague concept. In San Francisco he enlisted me and the drummer of my band at the time (SubArachnoid Space) for a recording session and live show. The names Mystic Sensorium and Ohkami no Jikan were used for this visit and the follow-up in 1999.
Shortly thereafter I was talking with another friend who mentioned "the cool releases with Nanjo". Surprise! I hadn't known that Nanjo released recordings from our shows on CDR via his own La Musica label, but I shouldn't have been surprised. He was well-known for recording and releasing almost everything, and not bothering to ask anyone for permission. It was just assumed, I think, that anything might show up somewhere at some point. But it did take me a little while to track down copies of the releases!
It wasn't long after that, though, that Nanjo essentially vanished. After 2001 he moved away from Tokyo, and disappeared from the scene for unknown reasons (at least I never heard why). Word is he may have re-emerged recently, and we can hope so. There was a time when Nanjo Asahito was essentially creating his own scene through sheer energy, with dozens of releases a year of phenomenal psychedelic music ranging from distorto-rock to gorgeous ritualistic atmospheres. We'd all be better off with him at work again.
I hope the long-overdue reissue this year of High Rise II on Black Editions will reach a new audience, and drill the eardrums of appreciative listeners. Perhaps a proper edition of the band's first album will follow, and who knows, other Nanjo work that deserves a wider audience as well. Hint, hint.
United Airlines DC-3 Mainliner, 1930s by Greg Bishop
Via Flickr:
United DC-3 Mainliner "State of California" in flight, late 1930s imgur.com/r/HistoryPorn/FbM9ffW
