A Creative Approach to Sounds of the 60's and 70's
By NEIL STRAUSS
Published: August 21, 1997
With the rapid adulteration of alternative styles of contemporary music in America, it's surprising that only a small group of music fans have discovered Japan's underground rock scene. On Monday night at the small downtown club Brownie's, the Japanese band Ghost put on a show that could have transfixed the audience at a major festival. Of course, the year would have to have been 1969.
For 11 years, Ghost has been living out of churches and communal homes and exploring the psychedelic, progressive and avant-garde hippie rock and folk of the late 60's and early 70's with unflagging creativity and a revolving roster of players. Its performances can vary from short, strummed acoustic songs to long, trance-inducing electric improvisations.
At Brownie's, the band plugged in and detonated loud, powerful, guitar-driven rock, evoking bands as varied as Deep Purple, MC5 and the Swiss psychedelic freak-out group Brainticket. Instead of structuring tight rock songs, Ghost focused on jamming and improvisation, creating hypnotic grooves that crescendoed indefinitely.
Ghost's six members cut a striking image onstage, each one in a slightly different stupor. Incorporating hand drums, bells, gongs and, on ''Rabirabi,'' an electric hurdy-gurdy, the band touched on Celtic, Japanese classical and jazz fusion music during its set. Masaki Batoh, the band's leader, was a diverse and accomplished guitarist, moving from fluid solos composed of high sustained notes to curt, choppy descending notes to vicious power chords.
If it had wanted, Ghost could have played one song for hours and continually taken the music somewhere interesting, though it might have got lost a couple times and occasionally stopped at places where Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and Can have already been.
Photo: Masaki Batoh, right, leading his band, Ghost, at Brownie's. (Rahav Segev)