Blue Chopsticks
2007
Rainbow
About This Album
What do you get when you pair the most diverse Japanese power trio with one of the same country's most inventive guitarists? Rainbow pairs Boris, a band who makes so many different kind of records -- though all of them in their way are "heavy" -- and Michio Kurihara from Japan's longest running freak scene band Ghost, who are also known to change sounds, themes and operational M.O.'s each time they record. The end result is a series of psychedelic songs -- yes, songs (albeit sung in Japanese with lyric translations in the booklet) -- that provide the Boris trio of Takeshi (guitars, bass, vocals), Wata (guitars, vocal, glockenspiel) and Atsuo (drums) an opportunity to do what they do best: invent spooky, time-shifting soundscapes for Kurihara to play off of without drowning in jam band fever. This does not sound like anything from other Japanese bands like Musica Transonic, White Heaven, Mainliner, or Stars. It's a memorable and disciplined series of songs that feel more like something Ghost would do than anything else, but Kurihara is restrained in his primary band behind Masaki Batoh; here he gets to cut loose with some of his more involved six-string freak-outs and electric humbucking sickness.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,7 and 9)

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