alomoni 1985

At No.19 in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler publication, Karuna Khyal's album Alomony 1985 is widely acknowledged as years ahead of its time, preceding other Japanese underground experimental outfits such as Fushitsusha, White Heaven and Magical Power Mako by almost 20 years. The bands musical influences are if anything more Germanic than Japanese with long hypnotic free form rock passages, a heavy use of tape loops, electronics, environmental sounds, distortion and backwards tapes underpinning some manic harmonica playing on some gut-wrenching blues dirges. Can, Faust and Guru Guru clearly had an influence on the band, as did Captain Beefheart and Pere Ubu. Not much is know about the bands line-up, although it is widely thought there was some crossover in personal with Brast Burn, another significant outfit of the same era which exerted such influence over newer participants in the Japanese psych scene such as Nurse With Wound."