or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

It’s the sort of record you’ll either love or hate (despite being nearly 150 minutes long) within a few seconds of the first CD. A screech-like sound comes out of the speakers, a bassline, an instant of silence, then the same sound with a loud hit of the drums. Once you get past that, it goes on for about three minutes until this ‘vocal’, a frightening groan, catches you unawares, the voice utters something else, sounding in a foul (black!) mood. This carries on, more or less, with a brief stop-start at the five minute mark, and the whole thing lasts ten minutes. A friend of mine compared it to early Swans upon hearing it, but the riffage is so ‘out’ that something like Borbetomagus is perhaps a more appropriate point of reference.

There is also this recurrent echo throughout, a heaviness in the air. Since it’s a live record it could have been recorded in a church hall (certainly seeing gigs in that environment would point to that) but it’s all inane speculation, as I don’t know. One thing I do know is the year of release: 1991. The year that punk broke apparently (it says here in this history book!!!). Back then I was still in nappies (not really), still to buy my first record, still to discover the joys of rock, punk, still to know what indie is, to like indie, to hate indie, and still to enjoy an Ornette Coleman solo.

Information isn’t something that we can turn to when dealing with this. What is guitarist Keiji Haino singing about? The packaging is also something you don’t see too often. All black sleeves with a booklet made of black textured paper and all writing (lyrics, one presumes) in Japanese (and all of this seems blurred anyway). Fushitsusha are lumped in with ‘Japanese Psychedelia’, which sounds very exotic and alien, no? Something that is relegated to an obscurist (snobbish?!) pursuit which only the wealthy can afford because of the expensive import prices. And anyway, why would you want Psychedelia in the first place? And so what if it’s Japanese? Surely the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix wore that fad out many moons ago! Since then westerners have been treated to such delights as punk, new wave (and its arch enemy no-wave). By the time you’re through with hardcore, sonic yoof!, ‘pigfucking’ and thrash metal you could say it’s just a ‘cooler’ kind of retro. And you could argue this after listening to albums such as White Heaven’s Out, which is OK but hardly amazing.

As it happens, most of this thinking above was formulated a long time after listening to not only this record but also their first Double Live album (PSF ¾) and my first Fushitsusha album, the UK label (and therefore cheaper) studio release I Saw It: That Of Which Only I Could Sense!. The performances contained within the latter (particularly the 80-minute title track) convinced me to shell out the money required for the more expensive records. And I only turned to releases by the Grateful Dead, 13th Floor Elevators and Jimi Hendrix and any other ‘jap psych’ after listening first to Fushitsusha.

This is the effect of time and distance. Maybe Haino and others saw something in Psychedelia, from all those thousands of miles away, something which we had already had given up on, something which bands from this side of the planet didn’t build upon after the deaths of Hendrix and the one too many trips taken by Garcia, Erickson and Barrett. Even though the first double live is a beautiful record, it is in the second where they achieve a mind blowing fourth-dimensionality.

Throughout the marathon that is this two CD set Haino’s ‘Power Trio’ go through one strange trip, one in which bassist Yasushi Ozawa and drummer Jan Kosugi make telling contributions: listen to the penultimate tracks on each CDs and you’d be forgiven for thinking that telepathy is indeed possible. This record also isn’t just the trio in action as there is a variety here: so we get (on track four, CD one), only a bassline onto which Haino sings beautifully over the top for the first eight minutes, he eventually adds simple but effective guitar which recalls Mazzacane Connors’ blues based approach but his beautiful vocals add more of an effect. It is at that moment, as that track ends, as the plucking of the strings fade, that I realized what making your instrument speak really means. On track five (CD two) he’s singing in a more folk-like manner and the guitar playing almost inaudible throughout (but it is always there, a ghostly presence). This is not just another jap noise album from another jap noise band. There’s more to it than that, not just ‘noise’ for it’s own sake, not just 15 minute ‘songs’, something more elusive than either.

But there is a psychedelic core at the heart of this album and it is that which is extended. There haven’t been too many ‘rock’ releases that have had this effect on me. Not even subsequent albums by Fushitsusha or many ‘jap psych’ albums by other bands (perhaps only Rallizes’ album Live 77 comes close, but you would need to track down bootlegs or MP3s to hear it). These are some of the most incredible performances ever committed to tape. Something to sell all your Radiohead albums for.

These are some of the most incredible performances ever committed to tape. Something to sell all your Radiohead albums for.