Music from Heaven

Music from Heaven Artist: Magical Power Mako
Label: Atavistic Records
Category: Music


Average customer rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1


UPC: 735286199727
EAN: 0735286199727
ASIN: B000001B7N


Release Date: 1997-05-20

Music from Heaven


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General General
Categories | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music
Experimental Rock Experimental Rock
Categories | Rock | Alternative Styles | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music
Ambient Ambient
Categories | Dance & DJ | Styles | Music
General General
Categories | Rock | Styles | Music
Progressive Rock Progressive Rock
Categories | Progressive | Rock | Styles | Music
Pop Rock Pop Rock
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Experimental Music Experimental Music
Categories | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

Tracks:

  1. Bells & Gtrs/Sunny Temple Garden/V.B. Phone/Sweet 12 Strs/Out Of Red/Indian Road/Jap/Fes...

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Deep trip excellence, for adventurous travellers only.......2002-07-11

Part of the reason for this review is to redress the balance. Unlike the reviewer below, I don't think this is badly recorded at all. In fact, in many places it's extremely clear, in focus, and crisp. It's certainly better than a great number of recordings of its vintage, though if you had to guess its age you would put it a good few years before the 1981 recording date -- probably about 1971, which fits it in nicely with the kind of music it reminds me most of (Faust say, or Popol Vuh, or Sweden's Algarnas Tradgard). At the same time, it is definitely a "home recording" ("Recorded at his private studio" says the note on the back), which leads to a very strange effect throughout the album -- in the pauses between tracks, you can just about hear what appears to be an imperfectly-wiped track in the background. But there's more sonic quality here than, say, some of those endlessly-recycled bits of grunge recording tape used by Acid Mothers Temple (the current holders of the "Japan's Greatest Psychedelic Band" crown). Especially toward the end, it does drift off into serious fog territory, which may be intentional. (I think the warning in the Sonore book "Japanese Independent Music" -- "The Belle Antique CD reissue is a technical disaster" -- refers to the fact that it's all one track rather than it was mastered badly.) Finally, since when was recording quality an indicator of performance quality? Some of my most treasured recordings are extremely woolly bootlegs -- and I wouldn't swap them for the pristine studio recordings for all the world.

It may also be that the reviewer below is confused both by the extreme psychedelic mayhem going on here -- everything pans and swirls and phases deliriously throughout -- and the album's patchwork quality whereby the one 50-minute track is not so much a collection of tracks (you can just about follow the "track listing" on the back, but only if you ignore some of the snippets) than a crazy journey through a chaotic other world -- a psychedelic voyage into the unknown, unpredictable, inscrutable. Hence the single track. You just have to put it on and be taken for the trip. You can't jump into this at any point and expect to hear something resembling a normal pop song. Ergo: this is extremely psychedelic, if by psychedelic you admit to the ingestion of recreational chemicals and don't sit there getting into a fuming fug at the lack of whistleable tunes, or the recording quality.

As a journey into the LSD unknown, in my opinion this is a superb psychedelic album. It reminds me of the first Acid Mothers Temple album -- also an unpredictable one-track affair -- or Gong's "Angel's Egg" or one of the collage albums by Can or Faust ("The Faust Tapes" is probably the best analogy for the novice: lots of little bits and pieces strung together at random) or the first side of International Harvester's "Sovv Gott Rose Marie". There are of course lots of other examples, but if you don't know any of these imagine an album made up entirely out of those little instrumental breaks in the first Family album. Here, if anything, the fragmentary nature is even more extreme than any of those: songs lurch into existence as if from tape splices, fade out and then in again, cut off suddenly, literally phase themselves out of existence, daft little folk songs alternate with bizarre sped-up pieces or Indian instrumentals, if you're bored with one snippet another quite contrary one is just around the corner. To me, the annoying thing is that there are gaps between the songs, not their rough-and-ready patchwork quality. I would have preferred Faust- or Zappa-style segues to the spaces.

Anyway, this is a certain kind of extreme psychedelia, don't expect garage punk or Toytown, so Erikson or Barrett analogies have more to do with the fact that both those people went off the deep end than their pre-breakdown music. It's an "Oar" (with which the folky pieces share a sonic atmosphere), or a "Madcap Laughs", maybe. Or just one hell of a trip which, like all the greatest trips (the first Hapshash album, say, or Amon Duul) should never be played in a sober state of mind. That's like looking at a disco with the house lights on.

1 out of 5 stars The worst sounding CD I have ever heard in my life.......2002-04-24

In the name of all that you hold holy, DO NOT BUY THIS.

I read a bunch of hype - and that's all that it is - in indie music rags about Magical Power Mako and how wonderful and psychedelic he is. They had me sold. I was ready to hear the man they compared to Syd Barrett and Roky Erickson and immerse myself in his sound-universe.

Much to my horror this CD only barely resembled music at all, let alone the works of Barrett and Erickson. The music is tremendously badly recorded, with extreme tape hiss, flutter and wow evident. It goes beyond lo-fi and even no-fi. Most of it sounds like it was recorded by a cheap cassette deck in a garbage can across the street from where the music was being performed. I am NOT exaggerating; this is one of the worst-recorded things I've ever heard in my life, and I've heard some desperately bad stuff.

There aren't any songs per se, just uninteresting riffs repeated over and over that segue aimlessly into insanely poorly recorded acoustic guitar with someone moaning in the background, which is in its turn abruptly interrupted by a big muzzy noise of some sort, perhaps a washing machine with a mike stuck into it. To make matters worse, in spite of the fact there are "songs" indicated on the cover, the CD plays like one long track from beginning to end. You can't skip over anything or even forward through it effectively. Not that there's anything worth skipping to, or even listening to here.

I am not a guy who needs slickness in my music. I have heard badly recorded and bizarre stuff before and dug it. I like many, many strange things. This isn't strange or psychedelic, it's pure and utter garbage.

Music Album:

  1. Morning Star ~ Spear of Destiny
  2. Rock Bottom ~ Robert Wyatt
  3. Minions Engage ~ A Gruesome Find
  4. El Fabulador
  5. Bought the Farm ~ Captain Tractor
  6. New Prohibition: A Musical History of Hemp ~ Various Artists
  7. That'll Be the Day ~ Buddy Holly
  8. Milestone-32 Great Rock Classics
  9. Descent into Chaos ~ Nightrage
  10. Radio 1 Live in Concert ~ Lone Justice

Music Album

Music Album

Music

For Dancers Only ~ Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra

Pomegranate

Wings over Water ~ Stephan Micus

Presenting Woody Herman & The Band That Plays Blues ~ Woody Herman

Bossa ~ Zizi Possi

Nomade ~ France D'amour

Rêve Sidéral d'un Naïf Idéal ~ Paul Personne

Arret Sur Image ~ Bernard Lavilliers

Indios Tabajaras V.2 ~ Los Indios Tabajaras

A La France ~ Demis Roussos