1.Crack Star [19:48]
2.Galactic Joy [08:27]
3.Tumbling Dream [18:43]

The Plaint is a notion that underlies so many artistic endeavors that it can be oddly invisible at times. The plaint's more visible cousin is something that surrounds us daily; the COMPLAINT. While a complaint is mundane, the plaint is elevated. The Book of Psalms is one Plaint after another. Most forms of protest are based on a plaint one group has with some established norm or rule. The essence of a plaint is a deep longing of the heart for something or other. It could be a woman. It could be health. It could be spiritual freedom or a release from the bondage of poverty. Like the old song says, "It could be spoonful of coffee. It could be a spoonful of gold..". Whatever the plaint is about it is deeply felt and wished for. Given this small piece of the inner core of what makes the Blues the Blues, we can pull back our focus and consider other music in this light. Given that the phrase, "The Blues" is mainly concerned with people shouting out their particular lament I suppose it is fair to consider Astro and Suzuki Junzo's new CD, "Cosmic Blues Experience" as a real Blues release.

There are no 3 chord, 12 bar stompers here. You won't hear anyone talking about the crossroads, gambling, love gone wrong or booze. All of the trappings of Blues music are absent here. What fills in the void they leave is a scorching, white-hot lament for the universe. It all starts off with a longish passage of jigsaw puzzle sound pieces. They emerge, expand and float in space for a bit then succumb to the next tone. These scattered bits are a trance inducing visit to the intergalactic space port. They are beautiful in and of themselves and show surprising restraint considering what comes next. I love the length of these tracks. There are only three of them and two come close to the twenty minute mark. It takes this kind of length, I believe, to achieve the backdrop and storyline if you will, that pulls the listener along. Yeah, I know, I love Punk Rock too. I love that kind of brevity and to the point stuff but we need room for everything these days don't we? If not we run the risk of just gliding over the surface of things. So suspend your disbelief and let these sounds wash the bad karma from the folds of your brain. The overall effect of this disc is that of an enormous build. The spacey tendrils start colliding more frequently and the music takes on a propulsive and at times aggressive tone. Track two, "Galactic Joy" takes this musicy element and puts it out in front. With the addition of drums the track comes on like The Velvet Underground pumping away on the riff from the Batman show while heavily medicated at a gig in a Lower East Side alley on Mars.

So how is this "Blues" music? It's all in the margins friends. There is a tremendous longing to be heard on this disc. It's the plaint of the Earth dweller looking skyward and wishing for flight. It's the cry of the infant pulled from inner space to this cold, cold world. It's the long slow motion notes pulsing and crawling outward in search of anything or everything. This is a Cosmic Blues for the Microcosmos of your mind.
(Keith Boyd/Blog San diego Links:http://www.blogsandiego.com/astro_junzo.html)

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Tokyo-based guitarist Suzuki Junzo isn't a very well-known name yet here in the U.S., but I'd hope that's on the verge of changing. Through his own Plunk's Plan label he's self-released a number of CDRs. That includes the November.10.2001 album, which I got from him earlier this year. Recorded live at Tokyo's Penguin House, it's a deep, cavernous journey through damaged blues and stark emotional territory that certainly brings to mind folks like Loren Mazzacane Connors among others. It's a man alone with his voice and his guitar, working things out in sound for himself and his audience.

Suzuki has collaborated with a wide range of other musicians and bands, including Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mother's Temple), Overhang Party, Mitsuru Tabata (Zeni Geva, Amazon Saliva), Koji Shimura (Miminokoto, Acid Mother's Temple, etc), Astral Travelling Unity, Nasca Car, and more. In March I got a copy of the amazing Astro & Suzuki Junzo Cosmic Blues Experience CD, packaged in a gorgeous DVD case with entirely psychedelic cover art. Recorded toward the end of 2006, the CD is three long tracks of utterly brain-swelling psychedelic drone and churn, fantastic stuff and highly recommended.
(Mason Jones/Ongaku Blog Links- http://www.ongakuweb.com/ongakublog/?postid=48 )

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We're just back from an insane tour of Japan and we've seen and heard some amazing music. The kind that rips your eyeballs out and makes you wonder if you even know what music is. The duo of Astro and Junzo played at the storied UFO club in Tokyo and blew my mind, emotive and cathartic. I sat like an insane asylum lunatic, laughing throughout the whole set. No one could hear me because this was the loudest act of over 25 acts I saw on tour. I was laughing at the sheer balls and the incredible attack on the whole body. I couldn't tell if my heart was beating or if it was the attack from Astro's moog that was shaking my whole being. You could see that Junzo's amp was dimed and still it just barely fit into the wall of alien sounds that dropped from the house PA. I looked over at the sound man in the middle of the set and he sat with a fan, trying to blow some life into the overheating PA. This is the kind of set you come to Japan to hear music for. Everyone always asks facetiously, why is Japanese music so cool? Well, this is why. For one thing it's the volume. It's a form of meditation that can only be learned by experiencing. And, it's not polite to walk out on a show in Japan. Take the assault, let it batter you in a way you didn't feel was possible. Let the sound drive you to a place you've never been. And then, in the middle of it, float outside your body, forget where you are, explore the ether. And when you settle back into your body and realize where you've been, that you forgot about the music and the place and the time, laugh your ass off and dig the sounds that blew your corporeal body to bits and left only your mind, floating, timeless, like Japan, one thousand years old.
(Gig Review By Eric Nielsen from Maquiladora / Blog Sandiego)

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サイケデリック・ノイズ・プロジェクト・ASTROの長谷川洋氏と、ソロを中心にAcid Mothers Temple・河端一氏とのDUOや、ZENI GEVA/Leningrade Blues Machine、Acid Mothers Templeなど縦横無尽にその奇才ぶりをアピールするタバタミツル氏とのアシッドロックDUO・20GUILDERS等々で知られるマインド・トリッ プ・ギタリスト、スズキジュンゾ氏によるコスミック・サイケデリック・ユニットのデビュー・アルバム。夕暮れの白昼夢。入道雲の向こう側で鳴っている雷を 聴いているといつの間にかあたりは真っ暗になってしまった。星空と銀河。夜が部屋に上がり込んできて、体の中にまで溶け込んでくる。そんな幻夢の全3ト ラック、47分のドリーミーな作品です。
(Gravity Swarm Recordings)

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