Love Will Make A Better You 1971

"Honestly! I cannot help keeping my eyes and mouth open, touching this album by my ears.

LOVE LIVE LIFE, a Japanese psychedelic rock project, was a hotchpotch ensemble of talented rock musicians. Indeed you can imagine where this project should go as soon as you find the members, but, as I'm sure it's much important, this terribly terrific album could be produced not by LOVE LIVE LIFE, but by LOVE LIVE LIFE + ONE. Namely, Akira FUSE the vocalist could activate this project more and more I wanna say. Basically Akira is one of famous pop singers in Japan - he can remind almost all of Japanese a beautiful & plaintive ballad "Cyclamen No Kaori (Flavour of a cyclamen)" in 1975 - and currently for us Japanese it's beyond all imagination he could shout in such a psychedelic project. As if Percy Faith play rock (sorry).

Joking aside, without any suspicion he was the lead-off man of this project, not only plus one. Listen from the beginning, and feel the first track The Question Mark by your skin. Akira's whisper "I'm a human being, I'm a human." can take us over our surrealistic pillow to another psychedelia. And here come aggressive battles between a dry & metallic guitar, a keen and crazy flute, and incoherent but strict drums. What can let them play not only ramblingly but steadily? I do suggest they should feel the air - by their eyes and their ears, and especially their mind, feeling. Call the air "the spiritual force". Understand enough. Of all instruments, I consider, particularly Kosuke ICHIHARA and Toshiaki YOKOTA's flute duo can boil their psychedelic spirit, with the crazily eccentric wave and stream. And Kimio MIZUTANI's shocking-breaking guitar sounds must knock us out completely. We can be enough pleased by only this song aka jack-in-the-sounds.

After this song (that is, on B side of LP), Akira's voices are very cool but active. In the second track Running Free his voices are running like a cool wind on the turntable. The plaintive violin solo and the strong brass section can make his voices stronger and sharper. The next eponymous track Love Will Make A Better You can be called as a "psychedelic funk" with as funky shouts as James Brown, as honestly I feel - his voices are so strong and aggressive that can force us to think so, in my humble opinion. His ability for a singer, not a pop artist, we can realize enough on listening to a mid-to-fast psychedelic rock ballad Shadow Of The Mind , as well as the previous track. Akira's bright and brilliant voices can be approved even with some special effects or altered tempo - he grasps the musical ground by his fantastic vocal cord. The last slow blues Facts About It All can make our sensuous stomach completely full - full stomach by a ballad singer with another way of singin'...wonderful!

Once again I say; PLUS ONE is so important."