After sporadic live shows throughout the late 70s and early 80s, Les Rallizes Dénudés took a hiatus, not returning to the stage until 1993. Fast foreword another 30 years and the band’s former bassist Makoto Kubota, working with the blessing of the Mizutani estate and Temporal Drift, have done an astounding job cleaning up and releasing CITTA’ ’93, a near mythological performance taking place four days after their “comeback” gig. Sourced from a magnetic ADAT tape (supposedly Mizutani didn’t even know the show was being recording at the time) it’s an amazing document not only for its high fidelity – this might be the clearest the band have ever sounded – but for some truly inspired playing, morphing now decades old tunes into new forms.

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.