WELCOME TO LPCDREISSUES
Customers who bought this also bought:
Anywhere was the first album released under the Flower Travellin' Band name and the recording that introduced the group's classic line-up. Originally issued in Japan by Philips in 1970, it combines dramatically transformed versions of Western blues and rock compositions with a brief original instrumental theme that opens and closes the album.
The band featured Joe Yamanaka on vocals and harmonica, Hideki Ishima on guitar, Jun Kozuki on bass and Joji “George” Wada on drums. Producer and manager Yuya Uchida had assembled the musicians with the ambition of creating a Japanese rock group capable of competing internationally, and the album displays both their considerable technical ability and their unusually heavy ensemble sound.
The short opening theme “Anywhere” leads directly into a lengthy treatment of Muddy Waters' “Louisiana Blues.” Rather than presenting a conventional blues cover, the group stretches the composition into an extended psychedelic performance driven by distorted guitar, prominent bass, forceful drumming and Yamanaka's intense vocals and harmonica.
Their interpretation of Black Sabbath's title song preserves the original composition's threatening atmosphere while introducing looser rhythms, extended guitar textures and a more improvisational character. The result is recognisably based on Sabbath's early heavy-metal landmark but transformed through the Flower Travellin' Band's distinctive approach.
On the second side, “House of the Rising Sun” develops gradually from spacious guitar passages into a dramatic full-band performance. Joe Yamanaka's remarkable high-register singing gives the familiar song an entirely different emotional intensity, while Ishima's guitar moves between blues, psychedelia and early progressive rock.
The album's longest piece is an ambitious interpretation of King Crimson's “Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.” The group expands its fractured riffs and complex rhythmic sections into a raw, extended workout before the brief “Anywhere” theme returns to close the record.
Although primarily composed of cover versions, Anywhere already contains the heavy guitar sound, rhythmic freedom and adventurous arrangements that the band would develop more fully on Satori. It remains a fascinating document of the emergence of Japanese heavy psychedelic and progressive rock at the beginning of the 1970s.
Track listing:
Side A
Side B
