Harumi - Hunters of Heaven

Combine Japan, LSD and a tape recorder, and what do you get? Well, in most cases, probably hentai or some audio-only variant of it, but in this lucky case, Harumi. Little record of Harumi is readily available beyond the music he recorded in NYC between 1967 and 1968, despite the fact it was put to tape by famed producer Tom Wilson (Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Sun Fucking Ra). ‘Hunters of Heaven’ comes from Harumi’s self-titled debut, ‘Harumi’ - an 80-minute slice of delicious, prog-tinged and delightfully weird American psychedelia sung with lush orchestral backdrops by a Japanese man. This album has it all - fake fadeouts, warbling reprises, 26 minute spoken word poetry slamz, blaring horns - it’s really aural sukiyaki of the highest order. Imagine a frenzied-by-biomodification George Takei singing Tom Jones covers underwater against his will and you’d have.. well, the plot of a spec script I wrote for Bioshock 3, but also a loose idea of what you’re getting into here.  It was passed our way by the (presumably) lovely Kate - thank you. You may recognize the violin line from this song as it was used on Diplo’s ‘Florida’ - and another standout track, ‘Hello’ was lifted by Edan on his 2005 masterpiece ‘Beauty and the Beat’.

Sidebar - a Google image search for ‘Harumi’ produces some, err… results. Here’s one of the few not involving tits or anime.