Up-TightThe Beginning Of The End
Deep down from the Hamamatsu basements, amidst smoke and dark shadows, comes another epic masterwork of destructive power from the Japanese psychedelic freakout heroes Up-Tight! A glorious incursion into a vortex of massive fuzzed guitars and reverb vocals, mantric drums and menacing bass pulsations touching the extremes of bludgeoning noise and delicate beauty.
“The Beginning Of The End” was originally released as a scarce LP edition on 8mm Records in 2009 and – after more than a decade – sees the light of the day on CD for the first time ever, fully remastered by Aoki Tomoyuki himself. Housed in our custom tip-on mini-LP gatefold packaging displaying unique and new artwork, plus OBI strip.
“No one does epic psych like Up-Tight and this has gotta be the ultimate hi-fi distillation of their sound to date: four tracks that explode classic Tokyo styles. Opening with “Our Own Portrait”, a mantric instrumental that spikes Sound Of Confusion-era Spacemen 3 with Rocket USA rhythms and pure garage abandon, they drop into “A Song For Your Pain”, a beautiful mid-tempo ballad with guitarist/vocalist T. Aoki following an achingly beautiful bassline all the way to nada. The next songs are more aggressively nuanced, opening with a post-Sweet Sister Ray style amp crack-up track that combines amazing feedback control with tortuous rending-of-time-and-space style guitar heat and some classic Haino/Sharrock six string heroics. An incredible free guitar track. But it’s the final blast that’ll take your head off, a classic death-decadent ballad in the tradition of Ohkami No Jikan/Shiuzka et al that combines wasted vocales with delayed nod-out rhythms and phenomenal lead guitar that matches the legendary Maki Miura for overdriven melodic iconoclasm. Totally classic Japanese psych, sure to be a monster in years to come, highly recommended. You need to hear this.” (Volcanic Tongue)
— Also available as Boxset Edition.