Up-Tight - Early Years

U is for Up-Tight

Carrying the torch first lit by early 70's Japanese noise-psychedelia pioneers like Hadaka No Rallizes, The Jacks and Taj Mahal Travellers Up-Tight have been gloomily moping around since their inception in 1993. True to Rock'n'Roll cliche and despite the trio's 20 year history and strong reputation amongst their peers the band have managed to maintain a thick enigmatic cloud around themselves. No small feat in the all enveloping internet age. The bands records are notoriously hard to track down with their discography spread across multiple labels, across multiple continents in multiple formats and often in very small numbers.

"Early Years" is a 2007 re-release and re-master of the first self-titled album originally put out in 1999 and in typical Up-Tight fashion was limited to a run of 600 copies. The band along with their dogged adherence to the sounds of Rallizes and The Velvets also filter in their own flavour by throwing in more contemporary influences from U.K.Shoegazer bands like My Bloody Valentine and The Stone Roses. Dense walls of reverb drenched guitar wash over unintelligibly echoey vocals as brooding drums slowly build up momentum for the inevitable unleashing of the claustrophobia inducing acid-lick guitar solo. They may not win many points for originality but you can't fault them for executing on an age old formula with effective authenticity. The re-release also comes with 2 bonus tracks of early Live and studio recordings dating back to 1994.



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Funeral Beer - Funeral Beer

This was an impulse buy that I plucked from the Japanese indie/underground section at Timebomb records a few weeks ago. It was the rather excellent artwork (Gold leaf CD jacket mmmmm!) and equally excellent name that drew me in and I'm happy to say it payed off. After giving it a listen I had to double check the liner notes to make sure they were actually a Japanese band as they sound very un-Japanese. It's not a criticism but you get used to alot of local bands drawing from a simillar pool of influences and peers and these guys are definatley drawing on more western centric influences. The album is fairly eclectic but fuzzed out, lo-fi shoegazey reverb drenched Velvets inspired indie/garage rock is the order of the day which makes them more comparable to U.S. bands like Thee Oh Sees than any Japanese bands I can think of. This self-released album dates back to 2009 and most of their tracks on their myspace are new so hopefully they'll have a follow up out before too long.

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