(Guruguru Brain, released 21 April 2017)
Japanese psych group Kikagaku Moyo (roughly translated as ‘geometric patterns’) have a limited back catalogue of a handful of EPs and a single LP, but their work is already separable into two schools of psychedelia. There’s the great Kikagaku Moyo of 2014’s mini-album Mammatus Clouds, a far-out trip through ancient woodlands and sun-worshipping stone circles across some hefty slices of visionary psych-folk, echoing both the ambient experiments of Neu! and the unexpected warmth of Animal Collective’s Campfire Songs. Then there’s the regressive Kikagaku Moyo of their debut House in the Tall Grass, an underwhelming rehash of 70s psychedelic rock tropes mostly of interest only to genre devotees and smashed festival-goers. Latest EP Stone Garden indicates a drawing together of the inventive and the wrought, although it’s just shy of capturing Mammatus Clouds’ spirit of invention.
Thankfully, Stone Garden finds Kikagaku Moyo largely embracing a much rawer sound than their past effort. Opener ‘Backlash’ is a hissing comet of a track, its primal stomp barely audible amid fiery crackles and a blow-out-your-speakers low end. This could be emblematic of a return to form for the group, a musical turn that upends the wrought principles of previous releases’ by-numbers-psychedelia, recalling something Can and Neu! explored in the 70s – hypnotic negative space, the unknowable allure of sonic dissonance. ‘Trilobites’ and ‘Floating Leaf’ similarly send the listener descending through a syrup-thick fog of guitar feedback, guided by a distant rhythm section seemingly emitting from the other side of a vast chasm. It’s on these tracks that Stone Garden sounds like the progeny of Mammatus Clouds: there’s a ‘many in the one’ ethos at work; the expression of a world within Kikagaku Moyo’s meagre, lo-fi means; frankly, doing a hell of a lot with a little.
However, for each step forward, Kikagaku Moyo take two regrettable steps back into the well-trodden territory of House in the Tall Grass. Soundalikes ‘In a Coil’ and ‘Nobakitani’ – Stone Garden’s nine-minute centrepiece – are overly reliant on psych tropes. On the latter track, a gentle acoustic guitar strum breaks into a stop-start strut, adorning itself with slithering sitar embellishments – more trippy than anything Wooden Shjips ever produced. Despite sturdy composition, however, it’s wincingly similar to Spinal Tap’s hippie-dippy parody ‘Listen to the Flower People’. These criticisms could easily be an indictment of psychedelia throwback acts in general, but it’s a shame to hear a band like Kikagaku Moyo sound so regressive where before they’ve proven to be so forward-thinking.
In the past, Kikagaku Moyo have joyously dedicated their EPs to bonkers experimentation, and Stone Garden certainly follows that pattern, even if quite tamely in comparison. Stone Garden’s standout moments are in its textural freedom – raw noise that glimmers like dappled sunshine – signalling a continuation of Kikagaku Moyo’s fixation on nature in their music. However, where the epic Mammatus Clouds went about sounding nature by cultivating a massive overgrowth – not so much representing the wilderness as becoming a wilderness itself – Stone Garden seems as quaint as a mown front lawn.