FAR EAST FAMILY BAND - PARALLEL WORLD

MU land 1976

01. Metempsychosis
02. Entering /Times
03. Kokoro
04. Parallel World (Amanezcan/Origin/Zen/Reality/New Lights/In the Year 2000)


Despite what Julian Cope says, the music of Fumio Miyashita's Far East Family Band always left me a little cold. The first album, "Nihonjin", had a nice hippie commune folk feel (then known as Far Out) but the next record "The Cave Down To Earth" was just too Moody Blues. Bland ballads on the wrong side of prog.

However, something interesting happened when German record label Vertigo requested that electronic pioneer and kosmiche hero Klaus Schultze oversee a German only L.P. using pre-released material. Schultze had heard "Nihonjin" and was interested in producing the band.

"Nipponjin" was an interesting remix/re-imagining of the first two records. Essentially guitars and vocals were turned down (or in some cases, off) and the synths and drums pushed up. Still not amazing but it foreshadowed what came next...

In November 1975 producer and band met up in the Virgin owned Manor Studios in England to begin work on "Parallel World". Abandoning the carefully constructed ballads of the past, Schultze orchestrated the band through drawn out electronic space music. There are 'songs' but this is essentially two half hour long pieces of music. Cosmic synth and percussion epics stretching far out into the ether with minimal but effective guitars and vocals. 

A wonderfully natural hybrid of German and Japanese space music.

Far out, epic and mind blowing.