Musica Transonic + Mainliner — Solid Static

Black Editions / La Musica Records

40 years ago, Japanese psychedelic rock band High Rise released their sophomore album, simply titled High Rise II, a now highly coveted album for record nerds like myself. Alongside Satori by Flower Travellin’ Band and Kazemachi Roman by Happy End, both from 1971, 1986’s High Rise II is a top-ten essential for anyone looking to dip their toes into Japan’s weird and wild world of prog and psych rock.

In the ‘90s, High Rise bassist Asahito Nanjo, alongside guitarist Kawabata Makoto from the legendary Japanese psych collective Acid Mothers Temple, and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida from the experimental duo Ruins, formed two new freak-out projects. Musica Transonic was described as the “contemporary improvised heavy psychedelic group” counterpart to Mainliner, the trio’s “psychedelic solid free attack group.” Both permutations of Nanjo, Makoto, and Yoshida were recording and releasing numerous albums, but one crop of Mainliner sessions, entitled Solid Static laid unreleased for almost thirty years. Makoto finally uploaded them to his Bandcamp page in 2022, but the official streaming and physical versions of these recordings are now widely obtainable, credited to both Mainliner and Musica Transonic.

Available via Nanjo’s own La Musica Records, Solid Static is 40 minutes of lo-fi, fully unrestrained noise rock and psychedelia, distortedly riding the line between the mission statements of both Musica Transonic and Mainliner. The opener and title track “Solid Static” immediately kicks things into gear with a ‘60s-inspired groove that the trio carries in and out of dynamic sequences across its 10-minute runtime and contains nearly the only moments of melody across the entire record. “Topsy Turvy” and “Kizashi” deliver back-to-back dissonant chaos, a stylistic regularity for fans of any of these musicians’ projects. Those two shorter pieces feel like the teasers for the Side-B tracks, “Rot Way” and “Prosecutor,” taking the Ensemble’s avant-garde leanings to their most exploratory and dangerous places.

Psychedelic rock from Japan has always had a particular flavor to it that just isn’t the same stateside; something about the way their players approach musical space and journeys is particularly distinct to their homeland. Solid Static is one of the combined, likely thousands of examples of this across Nanjo, Makoto, and Yoshida’s discographies. This is uninhibited, loud-as-fuck, feral music for underground freaks. Join us on the trip.