Leland - I’ve Got Some Happiness
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Japanese and insane, it’s Leland Yoshitsu, perhaps better known simply as ‘Leland’. Leland’s penchant for capes, tights, and black nail polish (providing style cues for Nuno Bettencourt, obvs.) might lead many to wonder if he were a Japanese superhero able to boil ramen with exceedingly narrow lasers emitted from his eyes, or perhaps dispense dirty pairs of panties to businessmen with heretofore unknown levels of efficiency, but no - he was just a regular dude, wandering the 1970’s Bay Area streets and taking weekly ads out in BAM! Magazine.
“I’ve Got Some Happiness”, taken from the album This Is My World (1976) features a somewhat jumpy, femme-tacular Leland playing all the instruments save for the drums, and includes a jangly, shred-tastic guitar solo. This is arguably the most tuneful offering from This Is My World, and would go on to be re discovered by a new generation of dickheads who read Pitchfork when it was covered by the notable band of ovary-havin’ menstruatin’ minstrels, Puro Instinct. They’re a girl group, is what I’m trying to say. I gave their version a listen for the purposes of science. Pitchfork labels it Dream Pop, which I take to mean that it sounds like they’re playing this in their fucking sleep. That’s a confirmed burn, FYI - but really it’s brutal. I’m not too familiar with their ouevre per se (that’s foreign; twice!) but I can say however that after reviewing some of their press stills that I would like to hug them while lying down; the singer in particular.
Leland is still pumping out quirky, fuzzy jams and even has a MySpace page, so perhaps he does indeed have superpowers and has travelled here from the year 2003. Check it out here.
Fig 1.1: HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII YA!!! *guitar solo*
280 plays
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.
