Les Rallizes Dénudés were a really heavy Japanese psychedelic band that emerged in the ’60s and played in various incarnations for decades thereafter. They tore up the Japanese underground in the ’70s with powerful music and captivating theatrics. The live experience is reputed to be a sensory overload similar to that of the Velvet Underground’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Their live show included friends from an avant-garde theater troupe, extremely loud canvasing guitar, as many strobe lights as they could plug in, disco balls, and communist propaganda. Rallizes existed chiefly as a live experience and have released very little studio work. The group itself is shrouded in mystery. They are rumored to spread communist and revolutionary literature at their shows (including junior high schools). The original bassist, Moriaki Wakabayashi, was a part of the Red Army Faction-led Yodo-go Hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 351 in 1970. Guitarist and group leader Mizutani Takashi has performed as Rallizes and as a solo artist into the ’90s; coming and going from the public arena for years at a time. Their music never received widespread acceptance, but they have developed a large fan-base among psych/noise devotees. New albums, that is to say reissues and bootlegs, have been released at random for decades and their music will likely continue to pop up on psych compilations like Ongaku 70 that contains an edited version of ‘Far Out Deeper Than the Night’ from a live 1977 performance. [Source]
New Music United 