les rallizes denudes rfi

when in fact there's quite a lot of footage of rallizes out there, not to mention all those hours and hours and hours of bootlegs

When I first thought that listening to them might be something to do (as a result of that piece on The Wire) I couldn't find anything whatsoever for a good while. My copy of Live '77 is on this very crappy bit of vinyl with a photocopied photo of Mizutani (I kid you not). It got way better on slsk (bootleg heaven) but now you just hit youtube and there are days of it, along with pretty crappy video footage that would probably get rid of the mystique.

There are some fairly interesting angles (some which would require sometime to research and write-up), and some proper highlights comps to be done. Memory is gone but I had a top [so many versions] of The Last One.

i dunno, they're pretty mysterious to me. i mean, relative to other bands?
you guys will regret it when i'm accepting my best documentary oscar for "searching for mizutani" wherein I track him down and make him perform in dodger stadium.

an empty dodger stadium, I assume

Dodgers will be playing at the Echoplex

There are some fairly interesting angles (some which would require sometime to research and write-up), and some proper highlights comps to be done. Memory is gone but I had a top [so many versions] of The Last One.

― xyzzzz__, Monday, December 8, 2014 2:41 PM (2 days ago)

somebody please do this, would love to know what's worth checking out beyond Live '77 (although I draw the line at buying Phoenix stuff)

A new high profile fan

https://instagram.com/p/5QU5F1JFMr/

https://instagram.com/p/5QVLvWpFNG/

There's a song on the 13.7.74 set (in the Great White Wonder box) called, or mistranslated as "You Were Known" with a lovely cycling chord sequence at a somewhat relaxed tempo that sounds like something Boards Of Canada might use. It's not a million miles from Dayvan Cowboy. Of course our boy proceeds to wring seven shades of glorious atonal sh!t out of it for a good nine minutes.

Note, a recording supposedly bearing the same title on the "Are You Ralliezed?" release and available on YouTube, appears to be another song entirely.

ysi?

not that 74 set, but this 76 set just went up over on big o - http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2535

yall there is so much lrd of questionable legitimacy on spotify. like, nearly grateful dead level embarrassment of riches

ha really? never even thought to look. wonder who puts that stuff up?

Anyone know if the discs in the Univive boxes have two-second gaps between tracks?

Double Heads Legendary Live is fantastique isn't it, especially the last set (23rd March 1981).

Yeah that's one of the better versions of "Last One"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4jJpRViOQI

what a bootleg

Listening to the France Demos today. It don't get much better than this, folks

About 18 minutes into (Flightless Bird): seems to be VU "New Age" strum & drum cadences w flying saucers, aurora borealis, electric razors having seizures, occasionally.

some kind of howling zombie feedback collision far down the subway tunnel now---flashbacks to The Strain

emerging from tunnel

I didn't know it was released as Flightless Bird actually, just sorta been listening on the random - the echo-y stuff in Enter the Mirror and Flames of Ice, with all the strum & drum...its something very 50s(?) I mean they probably are one of the best psych bands that really have an affinity and channel that specific, late 50s rock & roll sound. There is a slower, more languid pace..

I mean the change of pace from one version of Flames of Ice in Live '77 to this one here.

The stabbing riffs in Flames of Ice are so addictive - totally a late 50s hangover.

Yeah, I hear the 50s rock thing in so many of these bass lines.

How do you guys rate Naked Giza Star? I know it's just a comp but it seems to cover a pretty wide span of time (73 to 87) and, according to Discogs, "originated from a request by a music critic in 2003 for Mizutani to produce a high-quality release from a master source." It always goes (relatively) cheap, I was thinking about grabbing that one to feed this kick I'm on. Lately it's been all about France Demos and the mellow-but-still-blown-out psych folk genius of Deeper Than The Night (which has the best / worst cover art I've ever seen)

I'd been checking occasionally but hadn't seen that France Demo Tapes had had a more accessible release, although it does seem to be another Radioactive / Phoenix related label. That version of The Last One is blasted even by usual Rallizes standards. Isn't one of the other tracks also on Blind Baby, though?

I'll have to check, I'm not sure, haven't heard that one in a long time, and only have a crappy CDR boot of it. But yeah, the version of FDT I have is on Bamboo which iirc is another label by that Phoenix / Radioactive guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS3TzTeqxbc

this one is just so much loose leaked feedback

Naked Giza Sta

Giving it a listen to a few cuts I could find and I'm not sure on it. The fuzz I can always hook it to my veins but not reaching cathedral levels for me..

I've seen a couple of reviews of Naked Diza Star (I'm quite sure it's Diza with a D) complain that the discs are CDRs, so tread carefully.

It is Naked Diza Star, you are correct

Listened to some of it yesterday. Only issue I have is the sequencing, it sorta skips around and spans a lot of time (73 to 87), but there are some pretty great jams on here. Surprised by how much I dug "The Last One" from '87. Also surprised that the audio fidelity of these boots never really improved in like 15 years. Like it's often difficult to tell what 'era' you are listening to based on audio fidelity alone.

But yeah, CDR or no CDR, it's quite a bit of LRD for not much dough, so I may go for it, if only to have some new jams for the car

So has anyone figured out why there's a swastika on the drum set in that one video? Because I love this band but it's been bumming me out since I saw it. And yes, I registered an account just so I could ask this question.

link ?

Sorry, it's from way earlier in the thread: https://youtu.be/sbhtAejVmEg

It's on the kick drum; you can see it pretty clearly at around 5:30. I know Mizutani was involved in radical left politics, but sometimes radical left-wingers become radical right-wingers. I have a feeling something else is going on here, but it just bugs me not to know because I otherwise idolize this band.

probably general cluelessness/shock value thing going on

yeah, my best guess is it's a stooges tribute sort of thing ?

i did like four hours of research this morning and nothing turned up.

sent a few emails, will see if that yields anything but i strongly suspect (and hope) this was an idiosyncratic, very stupid, isolated occurrence.

Thanks for the replies! Yeah, I almost wonder if it was just there from the last act or something. I did a fair amount of research too (limited, of course, by not speaking Japanese), but all references to politics are to the Japanese Red Army Faction, etc. Let me know if you hear anything interesting back from your e-mails!

i did hear back and was tipped to a small group of far-right japanese bands doing ultranationalist / oi type things, none of which i feel like discussing in this thread. that said, i went down a discogs rabbit hole trying to see if there was any crossover between musicians in that scene and mitzutani's band c. '94 or really ever. nothing came up but tbh i didn't try all that hard. if that seems like a promising tip to you, feel free to send me an ilx mail and i can give you names of bands and musicians who were most certainly using nazi iconography / lyrics on purpose. as for me i'm going to move on i guess.

I thought the swastika was used quite a lot for shock value during punk and before. You see it on Siouxdie's armband, Side thirty, Gonn's amp cover et etc.

So would think it tied in with that.

Not sure if Ron Asheton's Nazi clothing fetishism does. That may be his own aesthetic.

my phone autocorrected Siouxsie's armband and Sid's tshirt.
THere were other uses of the symbol at the time too.
& Gonn were 10 years earlier, their Black Out of Gretely is a killer garage track.

Thanks for looking into it -- I'm tempted to do that discogs digging, but I think instead I'll just choose to believe that it was the drummer's misguided Stooges tribute. I just think that if Mizutani had taken a Nazi turn in the '90s, that would have made it into the legend. The fact that he played with Arthur Doyle in '97 also makes it unlikely (though not impossible!) that he believed in Aryan supremacy.

not sure if anything is to be gained by my weighing in here but ime the general Japanese grasp of Naziism and its tenets, both in theory and in practice, is very limited. This stuff is not taught in Japanese schools, the European context and history of it is obscured, and the understanding of the symbolism is vague. The average Japanese person does not really know what a Nazi was (much less a Jew).

That being said, it makes it more likely that that flag was more in the spirit of punk provocateurs, primarily British, that trotted out Nazi imagery for shock value, a detailed discussion of which recently took place here: The Ian Curtis memorial thread. It seems reasonable to assume that Les Rallizes Denudes were not real European Theater WWII buffs and more likely taking cues from a musical culture/iconography with which they were more passingly familiar (Stooges, UK punk, etc.)

It has been announced via the official Rallizes website that Takashi Mizutani died in 2019, which is a very on-brand way of breaking this news:
https://www.lesrallizesdenudes-official.com/

Heaviest RIP. The statement on the website says we can expect archival releases "with far more alive and striking sound than the bootlegs that have been circulating over twenty years"(!)

damn rip

some are saying that Mizutani may not actually be gone ... former band members are claiming they talked to him last year. the plot thickens?

Big if true!

rip...if true, lol

this is all so much in character, happy to remain confused (esp if we get better quality recordings that aren't on that fucking Phoenix guy's pirate label)

https://thequietus.com/articles/30783-makuto-kubota-les-rallizes-denudes-interview

Interview with former bassist Makoto Kabuta, who's overseeing the remastering

that was fabulous, thanks. I hope they sue the shit out of the Radioactive/Phoenix dude.

My copy of '77 Live (retitled Le 12 Mars 1977 à Tachikawa is on the "Over Level" label, which only put out two releases according to Discogs; the other one is another Rallizes bootleg from 1972.

that was fabulous, thanks. I hope they sue the shit out of the Radioactive/Phoenix dude.

does seem like he's probably made a decent chunk of change off of this music. also he is very lame.