Temporal Drift Announces Les Rallizes Dénudés Reissues
The radical Japanese band’s core discography receives desperately-needed reissues
This week, Temporal Drift announced the first official CD and vinyl reissues of Japanese psychedelic rock band Les Rallizes Dénudés' three-album discography. Originally released on limited edition CDs in 1991, this series marks the first official vinyl and digital releases of these seminal recordings.
The three albums—’67-'69 Studio et Live, Mizutani / Les Rallizes Dénudés, and ’77 Live—capture the band from their formation to their artistic height, and were the only full-length Rallizes releases ever approved by enigmatic frontman Takashi Mizutani, who died in 2019. These recordings, initially released by Rivista Inc. only in Japan, were never repressed and as a result, command hundreds of dollars each while the Rallizes legend continually grows. Temporal Drift’s new reissues, done in collaboration with Mizutani’s heirs at The Last One Musique, are digitally remastered from the original tapes by former Rallizes member Makoto Kubota and feature liner notes by Shinya Matsuyama and Yuasa Manabu. The Japanese and Western editions are separate; the Western vinyl editions are cut by Wes Garland at Nashville Record Productions and pressed at Third Man Pressing, while details about the Japanese ones aren’t yet available (they’re probably pressed at Toyokasei). CDs are set to ship in November, while vinyl is expected to ship throughout the first quarter of 2023. In addition to standard black vinyl, exclusive colored vinyl variants are available from Light In The Attic, Third Man, and Temporal Drift’s Bandcamp page.
Founded in 1967 in Kyoto by Doshisha University student Takashi Mizutani, Les Rallizes Dénudés’ 29-year existence is shrouded in mystery. Until the archival 1991 Rivista CDs, the only official Rallizes release was one side of the 1973 split live double LP Oz Days Live (which Temporal Drift is reissuing on CD in expanded form). In a review of the ‘France’ Demos bootleg LP, I wrote, “The Rallizes discography is a mess; there are countless bootlegs of varying quality, including some so frequently reissued that they might as well be official.” Mizutani’s elusive (and according to some rumors, paranoid) nature plus the band’s noisy psychedelic rock style (think of them as the missing link between the Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3) kept them an underground secret; while their popularity has grown due to sites like RateYourMusic and 4chan’s /mu/ board, they remain a cult phenomenon whose music often sounds like it was recorded on a potato that survived an apocalypse. They disbanded in 1996, and Mizutani’s last public appearance was in 1997 (only last year did we learn that he died in 2019). But despite having a rather small repertoire, Les Rallizes Dénudés was one of the coolest and most radical bands to ever exist, hypnotizing listeners with spellbinding psychedelia moments before assaulting them with abrasive layers of guitar feedback.
While these aren’t audiophile recordings by any definition, they fulfill their intended purpose like little else. Simply put, Les Rallizes Dénudés made some of the most intense yet beautiful music ever created, a force that causes even the most skeptical listeners to react with explosive hyperbole. Even if you are pressed for space or media-buying money, it’d be moronic to not buy at least the 3LP reissue of the absolutely essential ’77 Live. But be warned: once you’re exposed to this magic, your ears will never be the same.
