Bam's Music Reviews: Satori (Flower Travellin' Band, 1971)
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Satori is a psychedelic heavy metal album by the Japanese band Flower Travellin' Band. It was originally released in 1971 through Atlantic Records, and it would get multiple rereleases over the years, most notably by Warner Music in 1988 and a proper remastering in 1998. Notably the record has also been released on audiophile formats, with the most recent one being on SMH-CD, a Japan-only high-fidelity CD format introduced in 2007. Satori happens to be the first recording by the band to feature their original material, as the previous two records (Challenge in 1969 and Anywhere in 1970) only featured covers of popular bands like King Crimson and Black Sabbath. It's often cited as a cornerstone in Japanese counter-culture music, and many of its tracks have been covered by other artists, such as The Lennon Claypool Delirium in their cover EP, Lime And Limpid Green. I was personally introduced to this album by a friend of mine, as we discussed obscure albums, and I happened to listen to the entire thing in one sitting immediately after it was linked, as I happen to be a pretty big fan of more experimental stuff from that era, such as The Silver Apples (whose catalogue I will definitely review at some point!) But how does the album hold up today, after over 50 years of being in circulation? Without further ado...
The album is sectioned into five different parts, each of them rather fittingly being named Satori Part x (x being the track number). Despite its small amount of tracks, the record still clocks in at a respectable 42:14, mainly due to Part III and Part IV both being over 10 minutes long. Matter of fact, all of the tracks clock at least 5 minutes in length, so expect some long and powerful rocking! Being separated into distinct parts makes reviewing the album rather easy, and I'll go over each song in detail individually, naturally starting with the opener, "Satori Part I". Prepare for a long review, folks!
"Satori Part I" is likely the most recognizable song from the album, having been the one covered by The Lennon Claypool Delirium. It's an oppressive and powerful opener, featuring multiple tempo shifts and sludgy, dissonant riffs. It's not exactly the most complicated track on the album, but I personally feel like the simplicity of it combined with the low-fi feel of the lead distortion guitars really gives it that early 70s sound that's ever so dear to my heart. The lyrics, which amount to four whole lines, talk about the singer constantly being on the move and never caring about his surroundings, as well as "Sharing my trip with everything, with everything". The lyrics combined with the haunting vocals of the late Joe Yamanaka give the song a feeling like we're seeing the inner machinations of someone going through a constant out-of-body experience. It's an amazing opener, helping to set the mood of the entire album going forward.
"Satori Part II" continues the dissonant theme the album has so far presented, with a haunting opening solo that has an almost Egyptian vibe to it. This quickly transitions into the lyrics, detailing a key theme in the album: Satori happens to be a term in Japanese Buddhism, and it roughly refers to "the state of sudden indescribable intuitive enlightenment”. This song delves into this idea of enlightenment in its simplified and straightforward way, with lyrics like "There is no up or down, your truth is the only master" implying that an absolute truth may not be feasible, and that one's own experiences and beliefs end up defining those who seek to find true freedom in the world. Pretty deep stuff! The lyrics end rather early in the song, transitioning from a short drum sequence to a massive 3+ minute guitar solo to cap the track off. It's here that I need to give special mention to the amazing playing of the lead guitarist, Hideki Ishima. His haunting melodies and simple, yet incredibly powerful solos help give this album, and the music of Flower Travellin' Band as a whole, such an amazing atmosphere, one that not even many bands today can grasp, let alone the typical band from the early 70s!
"Satori Part III" might just be the best track on the album. Clocking in at a behemoth length of 10:44, the track certainly leaves its presence. This part is purely instrumental, and veeery slowly starts by a quiet, dark bass melody before blowing up into a dark piece extremely reminiscent of early Black Sabbath works. Ishima's guitar playing is at its absolute peak in this track, sucking the listener in with his middle-eastern tones. This combined with the subtle bass playing and the ever present drums gives personally a mental image of a land ravaged and scorched by the horrors of war. It's rather fitting, then, that this track would later be repurposed for a track called "Hiroshima" on the next album Flower Travellin' Band would release. Around halfway through the song, the tempo suddenly increases, and the effects on the guitars are amplified as Ishima explodes into a magnificent solo. While it might feel like a bit of a mood whiplash, it somehow manages to fit with the already unorthodox album perfectly. The solo eventually fades into freestyle playing, with guitars mimicking sirens and the drums going crazy before returning to the main melody from the first half before ending with a double-time solo, giving a sense of impeding devastation as the drums get louder and louder, only for the track to end rather suddenly. What an amazing end to the A-side!
"Satori Part IV" is the longest track on the album, taking up half of the B-side and clocking in at almost exactly 11 minutes. It, uh... doesn't really fit the album all that much. The song has a weirdly comedic tone, sounding more like something off of a Primus B-side. The lyrics are very hard to understand with this particular track due to Yamanaka's rather thick accent, almost like he's trying to sound unitelligible on purpose. What doesn't help that after the main verse, it transitions into... a harmonica solo? This doesn't fit here at all! This would be like adding a country track in the middle of a King Crimson album! I don't have many praises for this track, although mainly because it simply doesn't fit with the other songs on the album whatsoever. If this was on a more upbeat album, I would probably be giving it higher marks, but on Satori? I'm sorry, but this just isn't the place for a song like this.
Luckily for my sanity, "Satori Part V" brings the album back into form in the nick of time, serving as a pretty fitting ending to the album. It's another instrumental track, although unlike Part III, this features Yamanaka wailing along to the music, making the song have a suprisingly traditional Japanese sound. Ishima's once again in high gear, playing a powerful solo around the 3-minute mark, accompanied by heavily reverbed keyboard chords to give the song a hazy, almost dream-like sound. This continues until the final two minutes of the track where, much like in Part III, the song suddenly jumps into double time and gets a good bit more aggressive, rapidly speeding up until the very end, where a distant gong signs the album off. While definitely not the most active track on the album, not deviating from the same melody and chord progression for nearly the entire 8-minute runtime, it serves as a calm and rather fitting finish to this album.
Satori is definitely not a perfect album, as a fourth of the album's runtime is devoted to a song that doesn't fit it at all, but considering the rudimentary nature of its recording and the legacy it would serve in helping define the counter-culture sound of the 70s and the other three quarters being banger after banger, I can't help but love this album! The dissonance of the guitars mixed with the ghostly vocals of Yamanaka really give the whole performance such a unique and powerful sound that it's downright mindboggling. If you're interested in seeing how psychedlic rock evolved in places outside of the United States, I highly recommend checking this album out!
Satori is a psychedelic heavy metal album by the Japanese band Flower Travellin' Band. It was originally released in 1971 through Atlantic Records, and it would get multiple rereleases over the years, most notably by Warner Music in 1988 and a proper remastering in 1998. Notably the record has also been released on audiophile formats, with the most recent one being on SMH-CD, a Japan-only high-fidelity CD format introduced in 2007. Satori happens to be the first recording by the band to feature their original material, as the previous two records (Challenge in 1969 and Anywhere in 1970) only featured covers of popular bands like King Crimson and Black Sabbath. It's often cited as a cornerstone in Japanese counter-culture music, and many of its tracks have been covered by other artists, such as The Lennon Claypool Delirium in their cover EP, Lime And Limpid Green. I was personally introduced to this album by a friend of mine, as we discussed obscure albums, and I happened to listen to the entire thing in one sitting immediately after it was linked, as I happen to be a pretty big fan of more experimental stuff from that era, such as The Silver Apples (whose catalogue I will definitely review at some point!) But how does the album hold up today, after over 50 years of being in circulation? Without further ado...
The album is sectioned into five different parts, each of them rather fittingly being named Satori Part x (x being the track number). Despite its small amount of tracks, the record still clocks in at a respectable 42:14, mainly due to Part III and Part IV both being over 10 minutes long. Matter of fact, all of the tracks clock at least 5 minutes in length, so expect some long and powerful rocking! Being separated into distinct parts makes reviewing the album rather easy, and I'll go over each song in detail individually, naturally starting with the opener, "Satori Part I". Prepare for a long review, folks!
"Satori Part I" is likely the most recognizable song from the album, having been the one covered by The Lennon Claypool Delirium. It's an oppressive and powerful opener, featuring multiple tempo shifts and sludgy, dissonant riffs. It's not exactly the most complicated track on the album, but I personally feel like the simplicity of it combined with the low-fi feel of the lead distortion guitars really gives it that early 70s sound that's ever so dear to my heart. The lyrics, which amount to four whole lines, talk about the singer constantly being on the move and never caring about his surroundings, as well as "Sharing my trip with everything, with everything". The lyrics combined with the haunting vocals of the late Joe Yamanaka give the song a feeling like we're seeing the inner machinations of someone going through a constant out-of-body experience. It's an amazing opener, helping to set the mood of the entire album going forward.
"Satori Part II" continues the dissonant theme the album has so far presented, with a haunting opening solo that has an almost Egyptian vibe to it. This quickly transitions into the lyrics, detailing a key theme in the album: Satori happens to be a term in Japanese Buddhism, and it roughly refers to "the state of sudden indescribable intuitive enlightenment”. This song delves into this idea of enlightenment in its simplified and straightforward way, with lyrics like "There is no up or down, your truth is the only master" implying that an absolute truth may not be feasible, and that one's own experiences and beliefs end up defining those who seek to find true freedom in the world. Pretty deep stuff! The lyrics end rather early in the song, transitioning from a short drum sequence to a massive 3+ minute guitar solo to cap the track off. It's here that I need to give special mention to the amazing playing of the lead guitarist, Hideki Ishima. His haunting melodies and simple, yet incredibly powerful solos help give this album, and the music of Flower Travellin' Band as a whole, such an amazing atmosphere, one that not even many bands today can grasp, let alone the typical band from the early 70s!
"Satori Part III" might just be the best track on the album. Clocking in at a behemoth length of 10:44, the track certainly leaves its presence. This part is purely instrumental, and veeery slowly starts by a quiet, dark bass melody before blowing up into a dark piece extremely reminiscent of early Black Sabbath works. Ishima's guitar playing is at its absolute peak in this track, sucking the listener in with his middle-eastern tones. This combined with the subtle bass playing and the ever present drums gives personally a mental image of a land ravaged and scorched by the horrors of war. It's rather fitting, then, that this track would later be repurposed for a track called "Hiroshima" on the next album Flower Travellin' Band would release. Around halfway through the song, the tempo suddenly increases, and the effects on the guitars are amplified as Ishima explodes into a magnificent solo. While it might feel like a bit of a mood whiplash, it somehow manages to fit with the already unorthodox album perfectly. The solo eventually fades into freestyle playing, with guitars mimicking sirens and the drums going crazy before returning to the main melody from the first half before ending with a double-time solo, giving a sense of impeding devastation as the drums get louder and louder, only for the track to end rather suddenly. What an amazing end to the A-side!
"Satori Part IV" is the longest track on the album, taking up half of the B-side and clocking in at almost exactly 11 minutes. It, uh... doesn't really fit the album all that much. The song has a weirdly comedic tone, sounding more like something off of a Primus B-side. The lyrics are very hard to understand with this particular track due to Yamanaka's rather thick accent, almost like he's trying to sound unitelligible on purpose. What doesn't help that after the main verse, it transitions into... a harmonica solo? This doesn't fit here at all! This would be like adding a country track in the middle of a King Crimson album! I don't have many praises for this track, although mainly because it simply doesn't fit with the other songs on the album whatsoever. If this was on a more upbeat album, I would probably be giving it higher marks, but on Satori? I'm sorry, but this just isn't the place for a song like this.
Luckily for my sanity, "Satori Part V" brings the album back into form in the nick of time, serving as a pretty fitting ending to the album. It's another instrumental track, although unlike Part III, this features Yamanaka wailing along to the music, making the song have a suprisingly traditional Japanese sound. Ishima's once again in high gear, playing a powerful solo around the 3-minute mark, accompanied by heavily reverbed keyboard chords to give the song a hazy, almost dream-like sound. This continues until the final two minutes of the track where, much like in Part III, the song suddenly jumps into double time and gets a good bit more aggressive, rapidly speeding up until the very end, where a distant gong signs the album off. While definitely not the most active track on the album, not deviating from the same melody and chord progression for nearly the entire 8-minute runtime, it serves as a calm and rather fitting finish to this album.
Satori is definitely not a perfect album, as a fourth of the album's runtime is devoted to a song that doesn't fit it at all, but considering the rudimentary nature of its recording and the legacy it would serve in helping define the counter-culture sound of the 70s and the other three quarters being banger after banger, I can't help but love this album! The dissonance of the guitars mixed with the ghostly vocals of Yamanaka really give the whole performance such a unique and powerful sound that it's downright mindboggling. If you're interested in seeing how psychedlic rock evolved in places outside of the United States, I highly recommend checking this album out!
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