The Achers expand the German-Japanese brass friendship with an album that is intoxicating in places.
It is good form that Markus and Micha Acher from Notwist and the musicians from Japan who are associated with them do common cause(s), most recently under the logo Spirit Fest and as collectors of lost or obscure or wonderful music (on the sampler ALIEN PARADE JAPAN for example).
Here comes the cumulative crossover joy of the friends: the Weilheim-Munich musicians are working with Tenniscoats, Eddie Marcon, the brass ensemble Zayaendo, Mitamurakandadan?, Kama Aina and a few others on a continent-drifting chapel sound that we still have haven’t heard. It could be a melancholy piano track with a fabulous drone (“Garden Of Peace”), a piece of free or freak folk with vocals, or an almost hissing doo-wop that could come from a dirty hole in the United States of America, sometime in the United States Fifties captured on tape (“Higasa Amagasa”).
With 24 tracks scattered across two albums, this chapel work is also really lush. We discover the marching band sound as it is cultivated in Japan, with “Miracle Happy” and “Koyasan” the hum-ta-ta moves around the world and that is reminiscent of the German-American feedback from voluntary self-control . A split EP in the spirit of a German-American-Japanese friendship soon, perhaps? I would really like it.