Grimm Grimm - Kazega Fuitara Sayonara

by Adrian Janes

published: 16 / 10 / 2014

Label: Pickpocket Records
Format: 7"

Irritating and childlike new vinyl single from Grimm Grimm, the project of former Screaming Tea Party member Koichi Yamanoha, redeemed by its first-rate B-side

Review

Grimm Grimm is the guise under which former Screaming Tea Party member Koichi Yamanoha has recorded this solo single, for the label co-owned by My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields. The primitive percussive pattern (tom tom, cymbal, woodblock, over and over) behind ‘Kazega Fuitara Sayonara’ (‘Goodbye When The Wind Blows’) is somewhat irritating, like a primary school music class at practice. Maybe it’s meant to be charmingly childlike, and similarly the naive chanting of the lyrics. But for me, only the chiming, repetitious guitar line has some inchoate appeal. Far better is ‘Tell the Truth’, where closely entwined acoustic guitars create by their insistence a certain mesmeric mood. A wistful synth helps to make this a much more realised song than its companion. The sound has something of a Sonic Youth ballad about it, in its fascination with repetition and subtle guitar shifts. It’s this number that you imagine appealed to Shields, and beyond him will possibly do the same for MBV fans.