AIHIYO - Live

Second album from Hainos covers unit, who specialize in pulling apart hoary old Japanese MOR classics and rebuilding them into single-minded masterpieces of grunting/floating garage-psychedelia. The groups debut album appeared a couple of years back on the Japanese major label Tokuma, and was doubtless missed out upon by billions still bemused by that labels mischievous foreign distribution policies. Since their inception though, Aihiyo have played out around Japan roughly once a month, and this release is a document of some of those marathon, thrilling shows. Possibly the last document too, as Takahashi has since left the drum seat in favor of smoking his pipe in a rural setting, and bassist Kawaguchi (of Tokyos finest garage-Fushitshusha hybrid Broomdusters) is talking about taking a sabbatical. Anyway, this new release features nine long tracks, including covers of a Spiders tune, the Ronettes Be My Baby, and lots more you wont know. Most staggering of all is the cover of the Stones Satisfaction, which neatly transforms Jaggers baby-in-a-Perspex-box mixture of rage and boredom into truly on-the-edge jumpy paranoia, encapsulating the songs mental entirety without replicating the riff, rhythm, faux-Americanisms or any other elements of its external whatsit. As a textbook example of how to do a cover its right up there with, what? Fushitsushas Marianne? Jandeks Rite of Spring? Not much else, for sure. - Alan Cummings.