When people write about bands or artists that cross genres, they usually denote it by using some kind of punctuation, typical a slash. The near-mythical Les Rallizes Dénudés are that slash, the punctuation between their unique and mesmerizing blend of psychedelia, pop, and garage rock. Pierce the layers of squalling feedback and noise and you can hear the bubblegum pop and 60s R&B the legendary Takashi Mizutani used as a springboard to carve out one of the most interesting niches in music. To cap off Live Month we’re going to spend a week with the band, who never put out a proper studio album, only live, archival releases starting with ’77 Live, their blazing set at the Tachikawa Social Education Hall in Tokyo.

Originally released in 1991 on CD, ’77 Live is one of only three releases Mizutani oversaw the release of, making it about as “official” a release as you’ll get. I had heard about the band for years (usually from my friend Erik), but the live, raw sound held me at arm’s length for a while. I’m not sure when the switch was toggled, but at some point everything clicked. The noise faded away, the layers upon layers of distortion peeled back and I was left with Mizutani and his guitar, laid bare and reaching for some kind of amplified transcendence.

Captured reel-to-reel using a single mic as well as direct to cassette from the mixing board, sonic fidelity isn’t the point here; it’s capturing the analog spirit as closely as possible. You get that with the vinyl, lovingly pressed by Temporal Drift in 2022 and restored even further: there’s a minimizing of the static and feedback that’s present on the digital release and it’s an overall warmer sound, allowing the soft, tentative love strains of opener “Enter The Mirror” to really resonate before crashing into “Night, The Assassin’s Night”. With an insistent bass line that closely resembles Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him” (thank you once again, Erik) Mizutani’s Gibson SG soars on this track; despite being a four-piece at this stage of their now-decade long career Mizutani’s presence is undeniable. But the backing band is crucial: here it’s Takashi Nakamura on second guitar, Hiroshi Narazaki on bass, and Toshiro Mimaki on drums. Their foundation sparks Mizutani’s creativity into ignition, sometimes laying back, sometimes – as on the massive “Flame Of Ice” – conjuring a righteous storm for his solo to hack and slash its way through.

Both “Memory Is Far Away” and “Deeper Than The Night” fall back to more of a 60s pop/R&B flavor, albeit one where the reverb, echo delay, and occasional out of tune note adds a Lynchian, dreamlike quality, as if the music is coming through a tunnel to another world. It’s hard not to talk about Les Rallizes Dénudés without adopting similes and metaphor; the hermetic, Salinger-eque nature of Mizutani practically demands it. Especially during the opening of “Deeper Than The Night” – it could come straight off of a warped, stretched cassette of unused Badalamenti cues for Twin Peaks. It’s more of an ambient, vibe jam than the previous songs before it, easy to get lost in the dense curtains of sound the band carves out.

There’s a brief capitulation to brevity with “Reapers Of The Night” (yeah, a lot of these tracks reference the night…one listen will show you why) which at only eight and half minutes is the shortest track on ’77 Live. And then it’s on to – literally – “The Last One”, a song that has mutated so often it’ typically punctuated with some kind of suffix. Here it’s listed as “The Last One_1977” and it’s a snarling panther of a tune compared to its more humble origins more than a decade earlier (you can get a taste of it here). You can write a book just on this song, and the various permutations it’s taken over the course of the band’s career. It’s another great showcase both for how the band creates this swirling chaos for Mizutani to lay his solo on top of, and it’s weird for me but I can’t help but be inspired by it. He doesn’t have the technical proficiency of many of my heroes, but there’s a passion and intent to his playing that is so pure and so uniquely him that I want to just pick up, plug in, and try to get something out that’s real.

At least real for me. I think that’s the trick of Les Rallizes Dénudés in general: they do something that is so uniquely them and yet your ears pick u everything that makes them who they are. But you can never replicate it. I don’t think even they could, which is probably why no studio could ever bottle this particular essence.