V/A - Sixties Garage & Psych Rarities Vol. 2 (Cosmic Rock)

My Dandelion Radio show for August is now available on-demand here. This month's featured compilation is a fitting one as I seem to have become immersed in a lot of Japanese themes recently: I reviewed the Lee Fowler book here last month and I'm currently reading David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoe, the background of which is Dutch trading with Japan at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

This release has provided a compelling soundtrack between readings: it's not the sort of thing you can listen to while reading at the same time as the stuff on here is far too loud and captivating to share your attention with anything else. I need to dig out Volume 1 with some urgency but for now I've got this cracking release, which documents highlights from the Group Sounds era, when Japanese bands absorbed western influences and fed them back at high volume.

In the show, I feature three bands from the compilation: The Cougars, The Genova and The Burns. The Cougars released their first single Aphrodite in October1967 and it's that track I feature in my show, They're firmly at the garage end of the spectrum of this release, a fuzzed out R&B-influenced five-piece delivering a tune that's highly representative of that early Group Sounds period.

The Genova formed around the same time. The Beatles' tour of Japan in 1966 appears to have kicked a lot of this off and it's easy to imagine members The Genova spinning a copy of Help! before colliding in the street and heading straight to a recording studio. Not to be confused with the Japanese metal band of the 1980s, or you'll get an earful of something very different.

The Burns were largely a covers band, dishing out versions of Beatles, Hendrix and others no doubt to delighted Japanese teenagers. Adding funk and soul elements to the mix, this all-girl five piece's only LP came out in 1969. Mostly featuring more predictable covers (Knock On Wood, Purple Haze, I Saw Her Standing There), the band really go for it on the album's final two tracks, tacking Cream's Strange Brew then this, a cover of The Animals' anti-war tune which brings to a close the album and, perhaps, the Group Sounds movement. 

Except nothing really ends. Japanese bands have a long and rich history and it's best to see the bands on this album as laying some really interesting foundations on which Japanese guitar bands have continued to add fascinating layers: we're still benefiting richly from their influence now. 

You can get the album from Rough Trade and, hopefully a lot of other places.