b r a n d o n

Ruinzhatova throws together four musicians who play for the likes of Ruins, The Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple, and noise-pop group Omoide Hatoba (who presumably form the latter half of this supergroup's name). The outcome is unsurprising in its quirky, bizarre hyperactivity, but rather surprising in its reverence for old-school prog. There's about a half-hour's worth of original material here, and the rest of the album is given over to three covers: Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express," King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part II," and Yes' "Close to the Edge." And then, of course, there's the Atom Heart Mother-inspired cover. The first two covers are hardly what you'd expect; both are wild and humorous, particularly the King Crimson one: instead of playing "Larks' Tongues" straight, Ruinzhatova place their interpretation of it in one stereo channel, while their cover of "Sex Machine" plays in the other! The effect is hilarious and actually a functional piece of music — the two opposing pieces interweave with one another in surprising ways (and individually the two songs are covered pretty much spot-on). On the other hand, "Close to the Edge" is treated with unmitigated respect: the band duplicates the original version extremely faithfully, down to the bird noises at the beginning. They are particularly good at imitating the chicken-scratch tone of Howe's guitar leads. The pace feels a little more manic at times than Yes' original, but other than that and a somewhat silly-sounding vocal interpretation, this might as well be Yes themselves rather than four weird Japanese guys. The original material is fairly diverse but unflaggingly energetic. Ruins and Yoshida fans won't be surprised by anything here, although generally the volume and aggression levels are considerably lower than a typical Ruins record. The guitarists are remarkably diverse, at times rocking hard with a near-metal crunch, at others preferring to keep things abstract with impressionistic squiggling. Yoshida is, of course, dependably impressive. And naturally there are bizarre vocals scattered throughout, adding to the humor of the whole affair. All that said, I found most of the original compositions more or less forgettable. The covers are fun and the original material is decent, but Close to the RH is likely to be more of a novelty than anything else for all but the most die-hard, completist Close to the Edge fanatics. Better and more consistent material can be found on the albums of these four musicians' main bands, like Ruins. review by Brandon Wu — 2-23-05 —