by Christopher J. Lee
The Japanese psych-rock act Les Rallizes Dénudés is a cult band for which there is much to discuss, albeit with little verifiable information to go by. Founded in 1967 at Donisha University in Kyoto, the facts get quickly murky from there: a French name that directly translates as “the Naked Rallies,” which may be an obscure reference to the work of William S. Burroughs; a career-long aversion to recording studios that has resulted in a patchwork catalogue consisting only of bootlegs; a rotating lineup of members, including a bassist (Moriaki Wakabayashi) who was involved in the hijacking of a Japan Airlines flight in 1970 sponsored by the Red Army Faction, the armed wing of Japan’s Communist League; and, not least, an enigmatic frontman, Takashi Mizutani, who also retained a taste for leftist politics, Gibson SG guitars, and heavy distortion.
The music is equally murky, in a good way. Like the Velvets and the Stooges, the Rallizes tapped into an uncomfortable and frequently abrasive sound that mirrored their politically and culturally fraught time. An enchantment with voluminous feedback, peripatetic instrumentals, and intermittent, even superfluous, vocals comprised their defining features. Released this past February, YaneUra Sept. '80 is an EP of only four songs lasting just over 40 minutes that distills the improvisational essence of the band. It is a perfect entry point for new listeners.
YaneUra was a venue in Shibuya, Tokyo, frequented by the Rallizes, and this EP is the second of two live releases from this location and period, the first being YaneUra Oct. '80 issued in 2024. The latter is a full-length album of almost 90 minutes of material with some overlap in terms of the tracks, though the two recordings contrast each other in both subtle and blatant ways. Song titles can seem gratuitous. On YaneUra Sept. '80, “Flame of Ice” serves as the opener, providing a bass line with enough swagger to recall “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” The same song hits entirely differently on YaneUra Oct. '80 with an alternative pacing and the guitar parts by Mizutani and Fujio Yamaguchi (formerly of the glam rock outfit Murahachibu) featured more prominently. That said, Mizutani and Yamaguchi relentlessly define the remainder of YaneUra Sept. '80 with the proto-speed-metal-ish “Reapers of the Night,” the blues rock number “The Night, Assassin’s Night,” and the broody, proggy “The Last One_1980.”
YaneUra Sept. '80 is part of an ongoing series of archival releases by Temporary Residence spanning a period from the 1960s to the 1990s that has made the music of the Rallizes more widely available to a new generation of listeners. A new LP, Jittoku '76, is set to be issued this August. Still, their enigma largely remains intact;. Mizutani died in 2019 at the age of 71. Leaving answers or even a legacy seems beside the point, however. Les Rallizes Dénudés fostered a taste for precariousness and idealism alike, both musically and politically, thus tacitly conveying the understanding that experimental art cannot depend on either popular validation or conceptual fulfillment. Their intuitive recordings imply the value and importance of resistance against conformity, time, and even comprehension, in favor of pure feeling.