Koenji Hyakkei - Avant-prog from the Land of the Rising Sun

If there's one place in the world where progressive music is still bubbling with activity, it's certainly Japan, and the undisputed leader of this wave seems to be none other than Tatsuya Yoshida, drummer in the trio YBO2 (Yellow Biomechanik Orchestra 2), and drummer and vocalist in the duo Ruins alongside bassist Kazuyoshi Kimono. Active in both these outfits born in the second half of the Eighties, and responsible for several fine solo albums and numerous collaborations, since 1994 he has also been the driving force behind the Koenji Hyakkei project.

A lover of punk's energy and rebellion, and raised on classic British progressive rock by Yes, Genesis, ELP and King Crimson, he was influenced above all by the French band Magma. Koenji Hyakkei are thus the evolution of a genre that originates with Magma, while at the same time carrying forward the project begun in such extreme fashion by Ruins, expanding the lineup to four members and shaping the compositions in a more classical, fully-realized way.

Koenji Hyakkei scale back the noise-industrial and improvisational elements of Ruins in favor of compositions closer to progressive rock, and like Ruins, they continue the eccentric, expressive choice of an invented language — a path already blazed by Magma — pushing it further and navigating between avant-garde and progressive.

From Christian Vander's Magma — himself a drummer and the mastermind behind one of the most distinctive and coherent outfits of early-Seventies progressive rock — they borrow the stark European, apocalyptic classical influences of the rhythm sections and vocalizations drawing on Orff, Bartok and Stockhausen, together with the free-jazz influences of Coltrane and Coleman, fusing it all with punk and avant-garde music, favoring hard, jarring, powerful sounds, with obsessive rhythms and paroxysmal riffs that converge into compulsive albums, steeped in lyrical power and violence.

The first album, Hundred Sights Of Koenji, came out in 1994, and alongside Yoshida the lineup featured keyboardist and vocalist Aki Kubota, who came from another progressive outfit on the Japanese underground scene, Bondage Fruit (also devotees of the Zeuhl style), guitarist Ryuichi Masuda and bassist Shigekazu Kiwahara. This is the album that sets out the path the band would follow on their other two records, drawing on Vander's Zeuhl style but rendering it far more metallic, furious, vehement and obsessive. Among the standout tracks are "Doi Doi", with its quiet introduction, and the propulsive "Avedumma".
In 1997 came the second album Viva! Koenji, also known simply by the initials II, which again featured Aki Kubota alongside Yoshida, who wrote all the songs, plus guitarist Jin Harada and bassist Kengo Sakamoto. The record is aggressive from the very start, with an opening track, "Grembo Zavia" (words repeated obsessively), that gives no respite, hammering away as the four voices intertwine and pile on top of each other relentlessly, while the second piece, "Graddinoba Revoss", is solemn, with a slow unfolding pace.

The third track opens on a bass line over which Aki Kubota's cutting soprano voice takes centre stage, before suspending itself and leaving a void filled by a handful of scattered keyboard notes, which grow ever more insistent until, over the obsessive, hypnotic soprano trilling, the choir voices pile on top of one another, then stop short to make room for improvisation.

Suspended between chaotic delirium and an unsettling solemnity are "Quidom" (Aki Kubota's performance here is gorgeous), "Cambell Rotta" and "Quoth Dahha", which turns out to be by far the most terrifying, with nearly ten minutes of desperate vocalizing.

"Arammida Horba" is frenetic yet still steeped in lyricism, while "Braggho" has a vaguely ethnic flavour. Far more fluid than the other tracks is "Rissenddo Rraimb", whose introduction puts keyboards and guitars front and centre, with rapid riffs repeated to the point of exhaustion.

The third and final album is Nyvraim, which also seems to be the most balanced. The opening tracks are obsessive, cutting and evocative. The trademark choral parts, the vocalizing, the unsettling progressions: it's incomprehensible delirium, it's Yoshida's demons making their appearance. The listener is left wrapped in unintelligible dirges that hurl themselves into frenzied rhythms, abandoning themselves to dark rituals in desperate, discordant woods. The keyboard is well to the fore, melded into a tangle of distorted guitars. The frantic solos and keyboard riffs of Oguchi Kenici are suddenly cut off by the cutting vocalizations of soprano Samara Name, who has taken over the vocal role from Aki Kubota. The bass, as deep and present as ever, is still handled by Sakamoto Kengo, who also does an outstanding job on guitar alongside Jin. As with the other two albums, all four members take part in the vocal parts here too.

With Kubota's departure, having contributed to writing the more melodic pieces on the previous records, Yoshida becomes ever more the band's leader (he also plays keyboards occasionally), giving the album an even more personal, dark and delirious stamp.

Apocalyptic, with a bass that gives no quarter, is "Nyvraim", the opening track, which has the feel of a barbarian horde advancing, dark and unrelenting, remaining suspended between distortion and delirium throughout. Much closer to progressive is "Becctem Pott", with disorienting time changes, breaks, and keyboard progressions and regressions.

"Lussesogi Zomn", with its unsettling opening of cold soprano ravings, pushes into a furious acceleration in which the keyboard once again drags us along until the dialogue between choir and soprano. In "Vissquael", the balancing act between the choir's and the soprano's evolutions reaches its peak, while "Axall Hasck" recalls the Dream Theater of "When Dream And Day Unite". "Gasstrurrumm" too, with its grim opening march, continues on a chilling course, confirming the album's predominantly progressive vein, shattered as it is by constant time changes.

Yoshida describes the Koenji Hyakkei project as a fusion of progressive, avant-garde music and hardcore punk, and listening to Koenji II, Nivraym and Angherr Shisspa one can't help but agree with him. Besides the obvious debt to Magma, the influences are truly manifold: from the avant-garde of John Zorn's "Naked City" (not by chance, Zorn produced Ruins and played with Yoshida), from the King Crimson of "Red" and "Discipline", from the Germans Faust of the first four albums, or the Can of " Tago Mago ", to the Belgians Univers Zero, right up to Captain Beefheart's " Trout Mask Replica ".

Intensely expressive, no easy listen, fragmentary deconstructionists, raw and powerful, Koenji Hyakkei have proved remarkably consistent across their albums despite all the experimentation, becoming one of the very few progressive rock bands with anything to say today.

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