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rating
10

Love, Peace and Poetry - Asian Psychedelic Music
Normal Records CD029 (1999)
Series: Love, Peace and Poetry
Location: Asia

Info

Theme:	Asian psychedelia 1967-1977
Obscurity:	High
Sound:	Above Average
Artwork:	Good
Information:	Excellent (Extensive liner notes. Release information and notes about each song.)
Running Time:	56:01

Review

This collection of Asian psychedelic music, the third volume in the Love, Peace and Poetry series, is perhaps the best of the series—and that's saying quite a bit. Perhaps the reason that this collection is so strong is that many of the artists on this compilation were stars in their homelands with long careers, despite being little known in the West. As the liner notes point out, the combination of Asian musical traditions and the experimentalism of psychedelia often produced breathtaking results. This is particularly true of the four Turkish artists on this volume of Love, Peace and Poetry. The chords and rhythms that drive these tracks are not rock and roll, but the guitar sounds featured on these tracks draw freely on Western influences in the late 1960s, from the fuzz guitar of Erkin Koray and Baris Manco, to the trippier guitar sound of Mogollar. Japan is also represented by three artists on this collection, all of whom were no doubt listening to what was going on in the West in the late 1960s. "You Know What I Mean" by Justin Heathcliff (apparently the band's name was an attempt to sound British) had the Beatlesque sound of "I'm Only Sleeping," complete with backward guitar solo. "Blind Bird" by the Mops could be mistaken for an American record (other than the Japanese lyrics) and Yuya Uchida & the Flowers cover the Jefferson Airplane's "Greasy Heart". That is not to say that these artists were just imitating Western music, but rather they were creating compelling hybrids. And while British and American rock and roll bands were drawing on Indian music, the two Indian artists on Love, Peace and Poetry demonstrate that this was a two-way exchange. The tracks by the Confusions and the Fentones are taken from the Simla Beat collections, which came from "battle of the bands" competitions in India where the winner was determined by who could play the best garage rock. Though the title "Voice from the Inner Soul" by the Confusions would suggest a psych freak-out, this track is straightforward garage rock. The other Indian entry in this collection, "Simla Beat Theme" by the Fentones, is one of those transcendent tracks that stays with you long after you hear it. It's ironic that the Fentones achieved that "eastern" sound with a guitar-bass-drums arrangement that so many American garage bands were trying to achieve by adding a sitar to their sound. The two tracks from Korea ("It Was Probably Late Summer" by San Ul Lim and "Korean Titel A2" (huh?) by Jung Hyun and the Men are latecomers, having been originally released in the 1970s but they each have a sixties light psych sound. Also represented on this collection are artists from Hong Kong (the trippy "Magic Colours" by Teddy Robin and the Playboys), Singapore, and Cambodia (the best track from the comp Cambodian Rocks). In fact, every track on this compilation is interesting.

Tracks