Far East Family Band: Nipponjin – Join Our Mental Phase Sound (1975)
Far East Family Band spawned the careers of three guys. Their names being Fumio Miyashita (who often released his albums under simply the “Fumio” name), Akira Ito, and most of all, Masanori Takahashi. Maybe you might not know Masanori Takahashi by that name, but you know him as Kitaro, the prolific New Age artist of the 1980s and 1990s.
But what Far East Family Band did in the 1970s was not New Age at all, but mainly progressive rock, with the occasional Japanese influence. Nipponjin is the band’s second album and contained remakes of songs from their previous album, The Cave – Down to the Earth (1975), and Far Out (1973), an album from Fumio Miyashita’s previous band, Far Out. Klaus Schulze also produced Nipponjin, and you can hear some of his influence, particularly on “Undiscovered Northern Land”. That piece mainly consists of droning, with some bamboo flute and Mellotron.
The album’s real centerpiece is without a doubt, the title track. It starts off rather mellow, complete with electric sitar, with vocals (in English), but then the album kicks in with a killer guitar jam, eventually the band starts chanting “Om”, as well as repeatedly chanting something in Japanese. Some of the mid-tempo parts of this song justifies why FEFB is regarded as the Japanese Pink Floyd. A totally amazing song! The next song, “The Cave” is the FEFB sound in a nutshell. I especially like the intense middle part where they start singing in Japanese.
A lot of the rest of the album consists of experimentations segued in to songs, such as the mellow “River of Soul”. The final song, “Mystery of Northern Space” tends to be a bit more dramatic, especially in the guitar department, plus there are real strings used here. Regardless, a great album if you like Pink Floyd-like space rock with a Japanese twist.
– Fumio Miyashita: guitar, keyboards, vocals
– Akira Ito: keyboards
– Masanori Takahashi (Kitaro): keyboards, percussion
– Hirohito Fukushima: guitar, vocals
– Akira Fukakusa: bass
– Shizuo Takasaki: drums