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A sound never heard before
At the end of the 60s, the youth of Japan, in parallel with many Western countries, was becoming increasingly unsatisfied and politically agitated.
There, as elsewhere, art and music produced the greatest tremors.
Taj Mahal Travellers, founded in 1969, is a product of these great Japanese revolutionary tremors, and embodies in the most definite way the most radical and original of these energies.
The sound of Taj Mahal travellers was unlike anything heard before then, except maybe a psychedelic and exuberant version of 60s American minimalism.
A lazy and complacent press dubbed them ‘La Monte Young on acid’. There is, effectively, an element of shamanic trance in their music in common with Young’s work at the time.
The first principle of the group is improvisation, a strategy inherited from Fluxus, the movement from which emerged Takehisa Kosugi, the central figure of the Taj Mahal Travellers. Improvisation in this instance goes beyond a mere musical device, and becomes a philosophical and political conception of reality, which excludes controlling determinism and looks on as worlds are created. Pieces develop freely without time limitations – recordings lasting from fifteen minutes to an hour.
Taj Mahal Travellers give birth to magnificent monsters.
The tools habitually used by any self-respecting psychedelic rock outfit have little place here. An eclectic assortment of instruments are brought into the action :
Electric violin, mandolin, trumpet, harmonica, all types of percussion instruments, tuba, tree branches, synthesizers, a variety of traditional Far Eastern and Middle Eastern instruments, home-made invented instruments, chants, cries, incantations, vocal drones, groans and grunts, all treated
electronically in real time. Each instrument seems to follow it’s own path, but from this vibrating mass emerges a coherent world, a deep, dark, expansive, organic world, a
monstrous living being which moves slowly, breathes, growls, throbs and seems to exist beyond the will and actions of the musicians.
The Taj Mahal Travellers create fantastic animals.Driftings.
In it’s most creative period, between 1971 and 1972, the group, as their name demands, took their spellbinding creatures around the planet. This nomadic strategy is in line with the moving, drifting spirit of the music, and in their little Volkswagen van, emblematic of that whole era, they set off to roam across the world, from Japan to Paris passing through Stockholm or Iran and, of course, the Taj Mahal itself. This cannot properly be called a tour, more a way of life, discovering the world, making all sorts of encounters, and enriching their collection of musical and cultural bric-a-brac. The journey itself is an integrating part of the aesthetic of Taj Mahal Travellers, whereby they embody to perfection the desire of a great many of the young at the end of the 60s. A journey which, one might almost say, they undertook in the opposite direction.
Article by Wladd Muta, Translated by Owen Air Fracture
Some articles from the web :
.Taj Mahal Travellers by Piero Scaruffi
Takehisa Kosugi is a hippie become avantgarde composer. Born in Tokyo in 1938, and graduated in 1962 at the Tokyo University of Arts, Kosugi founded the Japanese equivalent of the Fluxus movement, called "Group Ongaku", a group devoted to improvisation and multi-media performances. In 1969 he formed the Taj Mahal Travellers, a psychedelic-rock group that played lengthy improvised jams that can be summarized in three principles: a Far-eastern approach to music as a living organism, an intense electronic processing of instruments and voices, a semi-mathematical overlapping of frequencies. Basically: LaMonte Young on acid. Kosugi mainly played violin. He was on the road with this group between 1971 and 1972, traveling in a Volkswagen minibus from Holland to the Taj Mahal itself. Two albums were made out of that experience: Taj-Mahal Travellers (Sony, 1972), also known as July 15 1972 (reissued in 2002 by Drone Syndicate) and performed by a seven-unit line-up, and Taj Mahal Travellers (Denon, 1983), also known as August 1974 (reissued in 1998 by P-Vine), four tracks over two LPs performed by eight players, plus one side (two tracks) of the legendary double-LP bootleg Live At Oz (Oz, 1973 - OZ Days, 2001), which also includes live performances by obscure Japanese musicians Acid Seven, Minami Masato and Hadaka no Rallizes. Thirty years later the Live Stockholm July 1971 (Drone Syndicate, 2001), a two-hour long jam, also resurfaced from the vault.
The four sides of August 1974, each about 20-minute long (the length that fit on an LP side), present the Travellers at their most sophisticated. The first jam is a concert of cosmic hisses that ebb and flow, distortions that scour the abysses of the psyche, sinister wailing and rattling that create a metaphysical suspense. At first, it straddles the line between Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine and Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht, but then it becomes more and more abstract, recalling Sun Ra's extraterrestrial jazz-rock. Percussions are used sparingly. Violin, harmonica, bass, tuba, trumpet, synthesizer, mandolin duet in a subliminal and obscure manner. There is no melody, there is no logic. Just "voices", both subhuman and supernatural, that resonate with a universal inner voice. The second jam is a cacophonous gathering of timbres and gamelan-like tinkling, over which Tibetan chanting and droning intone a demented psalm. Halfway into the piece, the band seems to lose interest in playing, so the rest of the track is a rarified wind of tenuous sounds. The third track continues this silent journey into the unknown, with odd percussive patterns and random dissonance. As the chaos increases and exuberant voices join in, the bacchanal turns into a surreal pow-wow dance. The last jam continues the program of eerie noises and unlikely counterpoint in an atmosphere that is both dreamy and austere. We are transported to a floating zen garden, traveling on a flying saucer. A wavering harp-like melody invites to meditation, and, for a while, the spiritual mood prevails. Then the percussions break the spell, introducing the usual element of indeterminacy and heresy, and the trip ends, one more time, in the resonating depths of distant galaxies.
Kosugi later became a classical composer, in particular composing scores for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and presenting sound installations at a number of international art festivals. His early solo works, Improvisation (Iskra, 1975), Catch-Wave (Sony, 1975 - Showboat, 2002) for electronically-processed violin, both considered among his masterpieces (and not too different from Tangerine Dream's contemporary works), and Distant Voices (Columbia, 1976), were in the vein of the jazz improvisations of the time (Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, etc).
His style became to approach the classical avantgarde with Violin Solo 1980 N.Y.C (P-Vine), released only 20 years later, New Sense of Hearing (ALM, 1980), Perspective (Flowerdogs, 1981), Kosugi (Bellows, 1981), En Ban (Fukyosha, 1983).
Melodien (Kunstverein, 1986), Global Village Suite (FMP, 1988), Violin Improvisations (Lovely, 1990), Music for Merce Cunningham (Mode, 1991), Echo (Apollo, 1992) are his mature works.
from http://www.scaruffi.com/vol3/tajmahal.html
.taj mahal travellers // august 1974 (cbs japan 1975)
massive landmark double lp of otherworldly drones. glorious rapture. listen close and hear the heavens implode. from liners: "Places and times of the trip: coffee houses, small galleries of Tokyo. They perform also on lonely beaches at dawn or on deserted hills in the afternoon. Also in Sweden, India, Iran, and England. Wherever a power supply is available. 'This music is not rehearsed, it happens. Without written notes or oral instructions; without an ensemble leader, each one having his own discourse immediately integrated into a slow, irregular throbbing of complex sound waves. Sound waves surfing.' Verfremdung: instruments are amplified with delay through echo machines. Previously produced sounds delivered by distant loudspeakers have already become something beyond reach when heard. This feedback - actually a time-space lag - is the basis of their music. The instrument arsenal: a violin played with glissandi in the same manner as the Indian sitar, string bass, guitar, drums, harmonica, small synthesizers, santurs (Iranian dulcimer played with two spoon-shaped mallets), a shahnal (Indian oboe), voices (Japanese Buddhist chanting, harmonic singing such as La Monte Young does or as heard in Stockhausen's 'Stimmung'). Amplifiers: a heterodyne (voltage controlled filters connected to infrasonic wave sources) which changes tone colors back and forth very slowly. Also, other rather primitive handmade electronic devices. All these contribute to the everchanging diversity of the ensemble. Close your eyes, relax and musically receive passing clouds, breezes,surging waves. This music is slow as a Japanese tea ceremony and as peacefully full of cheer as ancient scroll paintings." the japanese p-vine cd reissue from 6 or so years ago might still be available at around $40. get it. http://rapidshare.de/files/10933372/taj1.rar (47 mb) http://rapidshare.de/files/10934396/taj2.rar (55 mb)
INSECTANDINDIVIDUAL. (Article from web)
http://insectandindividual.blogspot.com/2006/01/taj-mahal-tr avellers-august-1974.html
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TAJ MAHAL TRAVELERS "July 15, 1972" (Showboat/Sky Station)
On a trip to New York during college I came across a copy of Roger Sutherland's "New Perspectives in Music" in a used bookstore downtown. The book is a ridiculously great overview of post-Cage streams in new music, from live electronic music to free improvisation to conceptual sound art that is now sadly out of print and begging to be repressed. In a chapter on electro-acoustic music, alongside AMM, MEV and Morphogenesis (of which Sutherland is a member), the author writes about a mysterious collective of Japanese sonic explorers called the Taj Mahal Travelers. The accompanying photo wouldn't have been out of place in an Acid Mother's Temple press kit, and I had to wonder what sort of gnostic racket these guys were responsible for. Over the intervening years, documents of varying degrees of legitimacy have surfaced to provide insight into the sound world of a group practiced in balancing the meditational Om with the electrical ohm. Over the course of its life span, TMT held site-specific concerts in remote outdoor environments, devised immersive multi-media events, and bewildered listeners via radio waves across several continents. From 1971 to 1972, the Travelers carried out a series of events across the face of Europe, trekking all the way to India (there is a signifigant Indian influence to be found in the group's mass of droning overtones). The CD before us is a reissue of the Travelers' first album on CBS/Sony Japan, recorded with an impressive array of instruments: electronic violin,oscillators, suntool (!), harmonica, sheet iron, vibraphone, electronic trumpet, vocals and more ring modulators than the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Kosugi and company deploy echo boxes with all the abandon of Eddie Hazel rocking a wah-wah pedal, lending the whole session a submerged, almost dub-like feel -- either that or Teo Macero's production of Miles'ballads. Time seems to expand and contract as sound clouds drift across the stereo field like colored gas in a Ben Franklin experiment.
http://www.othermusic.com/2002march06update.html
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