The Gerogerigegege - Hell Driver (1999)

 

Styles: Free Improvisation, Drone, Field Recordings | JP

The Gerogerigegege - Japan's "Ultra Shit Band" and Juntaro Yamanouchi's brainchild, has been an on and off obsession of mine since I started seriously listening to music in 2022. They were the reason I ever got into Noise and Industrial music, though my interest in both has significantly lessened over time. Nonetheless, they influenced my music journey a lot and opened my mind up not just to the aforementioned genres but also Free Improv., Hardcore Punk, Field Recordings and many more forms of art. They will definitely get more reviews in the future but for this one I want to focus on their 1999 release, Hell Driver. With the exception of Endless Humiliation from half a decade earlier, they were still a relatively light-hearted band with a manic punk energy to them. Despite there being a few more releases from them before the hiatus after this, including one in the same year, this record in a way feels like a spiritual death of Gero that wouldn't be reawakened until their return in 2016. 

The record opens with a bar(?) recording with the speakers playing Julee Cruise's Falling. The song itself is already quite dreamy but the added layer of immersion with the people's murmuring in the background changes the atmosphere a lot. After that it cuts to a field recording of what sounds like maybe a New Year's celebration, with distant fireworks and people talking. Despite it recording what would normally be a happy occasion, there's immediately a sense of discomfort and loneliness that emanates from it. This album isn't exactly subtle with its mood but it's impressive how crushing it feels. The title track after is one of my favorite tracks the band's ever done. Like most of the other ones, it's a piano improvisation, and just like the others it is at times beautiful but mostly just very sorrowful. Supposedly, Juntaro's mother was a classically trained pianist who trained him in it too, which is reflected in the playing presented here. Although it's just improvisational pieces with no exact rhyme or reason, there's an underlying skill heard that greatly helps the tracks not blend in with each other. Sometimes he, just for a little bit, breaks into some kind of melody only for the keys to again sound disheveled and out of tune. Then comes the main course. 

Moonlight & His Loser Knife is a recording of a live performance from '96, marking possibly the most 'challenging' this band has ever gotten which says a lot. It opens up with a short sample of Massive Attack's Sly until it fades into the center-piece. A thirty minute Drone improvisation performed with a guitar tuner, with occasional bursts of percussion that help break up the monotony. The reasons I love this performance so much are the same as why I initially couldn't get into it. The repetitiveness, the high-pitched ringing of the tuner, the length and everything else comes together to form such a difficult but rewarding track. If you do give it a chance, if you let your guard down just for half an hour, you will hopefully understand where I'm coming from.
Pray Silently ~ Play for Late Mr. Hiroyuki Ohkura is supposedly named after the man who thought of the improv. method used on this, which seems to be that whatever was used to record it was put inside the instrument itself. You hear every string and even the recorder moving sometimes, with these very hollow sounding notes played. I'd say it's my least favorite main track here but it's still great. After that there's another improv. similar to the title track.

Of their original run, Hell Driver is the most daring artistic statement that the band made. It's a harrowing piece of work that speaks for itself more than I ever could.

9.5/10

See also: Otomo Yoshihide

Listen here: YouTube

- kreyzi

A Gero loving friend of mine has a blog, check that out!

Link to my old 2022 review