4 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft

Produced by: Tatsuya Yoshida (?)

As the initial incarnation of Ruins was winding down, Tatsuya Yoshida’s 高円寺百景 started to shift gears somewhat: on Nivraym, the evolving jazz / spaz / rock / Zeuhl / funk of 高円寺百景 became more theatrical and operatic. It is undeniably the same band, and pulsed on Yoshida’s backbone of drum splatter, but the music is also more grooving, and paced, almost approaching pop at points… if a rather, er, especially enthused version of that.

Nivraym is celebratory, and weird; Sagara Nami’s vocals tower over, but also intertwine with, the insanely synced rhythm section of keys and sax and guitar, crafting a quite uniquely beautiful, nervy bubble of bass lines and proggy snyths and trilled nonsense singing. Multiple listens (and the new master) help bring out the layers, which underlines how key that layering is in making sure the sound never overwhelms: while angular guitarwork helped make this no-wavey initially, the way the playing weaves in and out, punching up distorted riffs on occasion is an amazing bit of restraint; similarly, the whole group is essentially singing along, but not such that they become a chorus, exactly – Nami is the key, and the other voices are there for inflection.

In the process of smoothing out 高円寺百景’s sound, the group does lose some build and release tension; Nivraym is “always on,” and despite how surprisingly smooth and soothing all this volume can be – despite key freakouts, and frequent jazz freak breakdowns, and Yoshida’s nonstop beats – it is still pitched at a particularly antic level for the whole runtime, which can tire. The ‘revisited’ track order does try to address this somewhat, moving the instrumental Axall Hasck into the approximate middle, and epic 9-minute Gassttrumm to the end, but still, the core sound is perpetual motion, so there’s only so many ways to tweak that.

This 2022 redo, as mentioned, resequences, but also remasters and mixes, and I’m – no pun intended – mixed on that. Yoshida has balanced out those aforementioned layers, which is a positive, and makes the record sound richer, putting it more in line with the followup discs; that said, there’s a kind of harshness to the original mix which is nice – you can get a sense of that on the live, bonus tracks, since they’re a bit “flatter” – and maybe allows for greater divide between tonal highs and lows. However, back on the positive: I love hearing the other artists’ contributions to the music in full. I do think the new track order works well with this mix / master, as suggested above; because the sound of the 2009 edition and this one are distinct, it’s hard to compare the track order 1:1 otherwise.

The Skin Graft vinyl packaging looks fantastic – sure, it’s the same artwork, but 高円寺百景’s packaging has always been pretty cool, and it’s nice seeing it at fuller size – and the sound is crisp and deep.

Another excellent and worthy update to 高円寺百景’s catalogue.