In the mid-'90s, back when Ghost — his grand band of spectral
space cadets and psychedelic hippies — were in the midst of a prolific
period, Masaki Batoh went solo. Initially undertaking his lonesome
recordings as a way of working out new Ghost material, the free spirit
found himself unable to resist the freedoms of compositional and
artistic independence, in which he could explore the reaches of his
musical spirit in less precious detail. Ghost, like so many Japanese
bands, are renowned for their contemplative, deliberate approach to
recording, where the elements of songs and mixes and the album as whole
are discussed, in depth, over the (ongoing) process. It's no surprise,
then, that Batoh's solo forays — two vinyl-only longplayers, 1995's A
Ghost From the Darkened Sea and 1996's Kikaokubeshi, recorded in Ghost's
Lama Rabi Rabi era, when they, as band, were at the peak of their
communal powers — found him exploring ideas and ideals that didn't fit
his rock band's considered whole; these outings, thus, were the outlet where
Batoh felt he could function in a more "free" fashion. With both albums
now compiled onto compact disc all these years down the line, the
clarity of hindsight makes it easy to identify three basic Batoh
"modes" herein: off-the-cuff covers (a kooky take on Can's "You Doo
Right", a flowery spin through the circumvolutions of Cream's "World of
Pain"), gentle instrumentalism (including marimba playing that
foreshadowed the tuned-percussion workouts surfacing later on
Snuffbox Immanence), and many a freaked-out drone. Given Batoh's
unwashed aesthetic, it's no surprise that his drones have more in common
with tribal incantation than modernist minimalism; he uses the
foot-pumped harmonium and the hand-wound hurdy-gurdy to wind up droning
tones that he dresses in wordless throat-singing and deadzone
voodoo drumming, his only concession to the modern age, in such, being
the use of a Moog at various points. Though his man-as-island making of
these records means the innate qualities of this pseudo-tribal music
are isolationist, as opposed to music growing from the communal power of
the gathered tribe, there is still a beautiful sense of earthy, earthly
expression herein. Which is no surprise, given that Ghost have long
been considered the band that gives hippies a good name.
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