Powerhouse Japanese Psych Band Comes to August Hall

By Dave Pehling

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — The Japanese psych wayfarers who make up Kikagaku Moyo have constructed a large world following within the area of a decade. The Tokyo band obtained it is begin when precept songwriter Go Kurosawa (drums/vocals) and Tomo Katsurada (guitar/vocals) based the band as a unfastened music collective, busking within the streets as a duo whereas refining an acoustic psych-folk sound that echoed the affect of German hippy experimentalists Amon Düül and Japanese band Taj Mahal Travellers.

They’d add bass participant Kotsu Man and guitarist Daoud Popal, ultimately increasing to a 5 piece when Go’s brother Ryu Kurosawa returned to Japan after learning sitar in India. The band recorded it is first EP within the area of a day and posted it to their Bandcamp web page. These recordings would appeal to consideration from listeners throughout the globe, together with small Greek imprint Cosmic Eye Data who provided to situation a restricted run of vinyl.

The band’s has continued to boost it is profile with a gradual stream of recordings that showcased a sound that — like their fashionable Japanese psych forebears in Ghost — deftly shifted from meditative acoustic grooves to howling, guitar-fueled area rock excursions into orbit. In 2015, the group issued a pair of 7-inch singles with mutual admirers Moon Duo (the famous U.S. drone/psych band that obtained its begin in San Francisco) and Acid Moms Temple guitarist Kawabata Makoto backed by Seattle group Kinski as a part of a particular sequence for God Unknown Data that shortly turned collectors objects.

Touring the world extensively with jaunts to Australia, the US (they performed Desert Daze in Southern California and the Austin Psych Fest in 2014) and Europe along with their native Japan, Kikagaku Moyo has established a status as a powerhouse performing unit. Final yr, the group issued a follow-up to their acclaimed 2016 effort Home within the Tall Grass that got here out on Guruguru Mind Data. The Stone Backyard EP discovered the quintet in propulsive, stoner-psych mode, unleashing a few of their heaviest music but.

The band had a busy 2018, touring the U.S. extensively with like-minded psych explorers Earthless and showing onstage with the band at Roadburn 2018 in Holland along with showing at such festivals as San Francisco’s Exterior Lands and Desert Daze in Southern California. In 2018, the group issued its fourth studio album, Masana Temples, a heady exploration of heavy guitar riffs and transporting sitar melodies that earned the band a number of the greatest evaluations of its brief profession.

Whereas the coronavirus pandemic would put a damper on Kikagaku Moyo’s exercise because it final performed the Bay Space — promoting out its largest SF present but on the Fillmore two years in the past — the band has managed a pair extra releases. It was featured on a collaborative stay recording that like-minded exploratory guitarist Ryley Walker put out on his Husky Pants label spotlighting a pair of prolonged jams. The band additionally launched one other live performance doc — Reside at Levitation — as a part of the Austin, TX psych pageant’s sequence of stay albums that features a recording from 2014 on one facet and tracks captured on the pageant 5 years in a while the flip.

The group performed a number of reveals within the larger Bay Space final fall, together with a particular outside present with Walker in Huge Sur and a headline live performance on the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. In January, the band introduced to its shocked fanbase that it will be occurring an indefinite hiatus after in depth touring in 2022, with its newest album — the scintillating psychedelic juggernaut Kumoyo Island — deliberate as its final recording. Along with an early Friday night time set at BottleRock Napa Valley, the beloved band will play what could also be its ultimate San Francisco present Saturday night time on the sold-out August Corridor. DJ Bootleg Bunny additionally seems.

Kikagaku Moyo
Saturday, Might 27, 8 p.m. $36 (bought out)
August Corridor