3 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft Records

Produced by: Magaibutsu

Oh, okay, we’re doing klezmer now.

Nah, Koenjihyakkei is still plenty zeuhl – complex, operatic arrangements; sudden time and style changes; epic prog – and perhaps they’re even closer to grandpappy Magma with the very performative style of Angherr Shisspa, but I can’t help but hear klezmer, with zooting horns and folksy, catchy rhythms. As brainstormed through Tatsuya Yoshida, that’s all fractured and beat-heavy, and this can definitely be heard as a next step from Hundred Sights to Viva to Nivraym to here, as Koenjihyakkei’s sound is further refined from the hardcore pummel of Ruins and into… well, that’s where I keep coming back to klezmer, as the full-band stylings of this collective (horns, keys, guitar, bass, and nonsense vocals from Kyoko Yamamoto on this outing) smooth off almost all the post-rock for what could be considered amped up elevator music. It’s pretty magical to hear it pulled off so effectively – to the extent where the live tracks added on to this edition sound exactly like studio tracks – and I don’t mean to pitch this as easy listening, as you’re average elevator music listener (is that you? Me?) would probably raise a quizzical brow if this album was be-bopping on their ride from floor 1 to 2…

But…

This is very digestible all the same. Which isn’t bad, just different, and so comparatively slick that I frankly have a hard time staying tuned in the whole run. Writing from the future, the decade+ later Dhorimviskha continued this style, though it’s more fully embraced in a way – it’s is an entire performance; the band reemerged from cocoon. On Angherr Shisspa, that this came along in a sequence of preceding discs with a rotating cast allows it to feel slightly superficial – another hat for Tatsuya’s mellifluous crew to try on. Any maybe if I didn’t have a bunch of Japonize Elephants albums, it would be a bit more mesmerizing, but I do, and it remains “that klezmer Ruins disc” in my mental filing.