J.A. Seazer

I plan on raiding a few albums from Julian Cope's Japrocksampler collection today and first up and probably my favourite record on the list is J.A. Seazer’s stunning 1973 album Kokkyō Junreika, a mind-melting 53min mix of heavy psychedelic rock, freak-folk, spoken word invocations, primal screaming, brilliant studio experimentation and some Kosmiche style organ workouts. J.A. Seazer is one of the great mystics of Japanese music, a kind of cross between Jim Morrison, David Bowie and Keiji Haino. Apparently he was a Yakuza soldier in his early years and having made too many enemies, grew his hair long and escaped into the Tokyo arts scene collaborating with Shūji Terayama and writing a huge amount of music, soundtracks, opera and theatre works. The Kokkyō Junreika album itself are the highlights of a five hour theatrical production and serves as an excellent introduction J.A. Seazer and the Japrockscene. Curious ? Step this way...