Bondage Fruit Japan
"The masters of Japanese Zeuhl boldly dropped their vocalists for their fourth album and shifted their style to include blues and psychedelia but started with the funky opening of Minus One. Zeuhl is admittedly on the backburner in this riffy jazz jam that wouldn’t be out of place as an old-school cop drama soundtrack. Prayer goes a bit downbeat and slow blues, before there’s some quirky and brilliant bluegrass themed spacey jamming in Screen Game. Cowboys from Kobaia! The best track in my view though is Storm Bird Storm Dreamer. A rapid acoustic guitar strum sets a bed for a 12 minute progressive and tribal sounding spacey jam. Song Bank though attempts to do similar as an instrumental space jam but is perhaps a bit too long and a bit too chaotic. Finally Old Blind cat returns to the fairly unique psychedelic bluegrass blend with a bit of chanting to go with. Not really zeuhl, but certainly quirky enough to be related to that genre, and a decent album for anyone a fan of trippy space rock, jazz fusion, and blending of unusual styles."
"For their third album, Bondage Fruit go live and take in a slight change of sound, dropping the two female vocalists and evolving into an instrumental King Crimson meets Led Zeppelin style. The influences from Zeuhl and RIO are still there for sure, but there’s a lot more improvisational jamming (at least two of those three also being a King Crimson trope). The opening 12 minute track Odd-job certainly wouldn’t seem out of place in Fripp & Co.’s discography, while the next rack takes a mellow turn, merging Floydian guitar with a minimal vibraphone, with some later violin, drums and programmed elements for added effect. Shortwave from Outer Space is a brief electronic interlude before the explosive Frost and Fire, with powerful drums and at times almost surfer-style guitars. A passage of this track also has a krautrock feel to it with galloping drums and frenetic violin.
We’re then onto the absolute monster of a track, Recit. The drumming in particular is a fantastic and frenetic piece of work which underpins a series of guitar riffs and violin elements. While much of it seems improvisational jamming, as another reviewer has pointed out, many of the riffs and rhythms worked through have an odd familiarity as if a tribute to some of the prog greats, however they are worked through so rapidly in between the frenetic jamming that it’s hard to pick out where they may be from. The jamming gets more and more frenetic and violent before breaking suddenly at the half way mark for an interlude with only the vibraphone playing solo. Guitar and violin fading in signify a foreboding mood and a slow build up to pace once again, and it’s the same frenetic jamming as before, right up to a lingering end to the track. It is very good, but really its far too long!
The final track Kinzoku No Taiji is another improvisational fast-paced jam which immediately after listening to the 28 minute epic, seems like a footnote and a continuation of what went on before.
As a whole, a good blend of styles, both contemporary and with nods to the past influences. Sadly for me though, the length of the final jamming almost makes me forget about the brilliant tracks that precede it."
