Much-anticipated vinyl reissue of the joint #1 entry from Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler, Speed, Glue & Shinki’s 1971 album, Eve. The chapter on their drug-addled exploits was probably the most entertaining in the book and it’s cool to put the sonics to the legend. Eve is a supremely crude blues/psych/stoner album that takes cues from western dunderheads like Black Sabbath, Cream and Led Zeppelin and misinterprets them as perfectly as Blue Cheer’s vision-over-technique re-think of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Songs about drugs, getting wasted, getting high, proto-metal three chord sludge fests and wailing ‘acid’ lead guitar make this one of the most mindlessly inspired rock records ever to find its way to the desk of a major label. Gatefold sleeve. Last copies!

Mind-blowing reissue of one of the all-time greatest Japanese underground artefacts, Far Out’s epic 1973 stone, Nihonjin. Far Out, led by Fumio Miyashita, would eventually morph into the kosmische synth outfit Far East Family Band but this proto-debut remains the most wailing, guitar-heavy statement of his career. The album consists of two long tracks ala the early Ash Ra Tempel albums, the 18 minute “Too Many People” and the 20 minute title track. “Too Many People” emerges from a void of delay and the sound of winds blowing through space to a triumphal phased keyboard intro that in turn gives way to a simple, descending guitar pattern and an aching lead vocal that is blown apart by some of the most ecstatic single note guitar histrionics of your lifetime. The effect is comparable to Funkadelic’s side-long Maggot Brain jam, with a clean fuzz sound exploding in arcs of tone over a crunching rhythm section. The title track brings in some sitar and heavier raga stylings and another beautifully bleak vocal over loose nod-out rhythms but the destination is still guitar oblivion, with more endless soloing to the point of destruction. A total classic, back in print. Packaged in a gatefold sleeve, this was in Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler Top 50. Highly recommended.