Guruguru Brain Rock & Indie 14 Items

Stone Garden 2020 Repress

LP | 2017 | EU | Reissue (Guruguru Brain)

LP | 2024 | EU | Original (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2017 / EU – Reissue

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Preorder shipping from 2024-05-31

2020 repress, single jacket version

Stone Garden started in a basement studio in Prague with a nearly continuous session over several days and nights. The original concept was influenced by the raw and seemingly endless jams of psychedelic pioneers. The freeform songs that emerged from these sessions were refined over several months at the band's home in Tokyo where each song was sculpted into an uncommon form.

Compared to the relatively song-based House In The Tall Grass (2016), Stone Garden is a window into Kikagaku Moyo’s more experimental side. While improvisation is essential to their songwriting process it can take on many forms. This record enabled the band to experiment not only with instrumentation but also atonality and a playful approach to mixing. The unexpected results have become five unique songs each woven together through the same process.

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Lair

Ngélar

LP | 2020 | EU | Original (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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In Ngélar—the sextet’s sophomore LP—deeper social narratives and more intimate subject matters are more apparent. In which they speak a lot about ‘tanah’ or ‘land/soil,’ owing a lot to the fact that their hometown, Jatiwangi’s history of being the country’s largest producer of clay/terracotta-based products. The people in Jatiwangi’s intertwining relationship with ‘tanah’ is simply unparalleled—even their instruments are mostly made of terracotta.

From the reimagining of their hometown’s past glories, Lair, along with singer/songwriter Monica Hapsari (who co-wrote and co-composed three songs in the album) and Go Kurosawa (Kikagaku Moyo) helming the project as the producer, sings about the rituals and traditions of harvest, to sending off prayers towards their once-prospering land and the ruins of what was once a dense forest in Jatiwangi, which they are currently trying to reclaim while racing with the massive wave of industrialisation. It is a contextually-sorrowful album as much as it is a candid, cheery commemoration of the band members’ everyday life in today’s northern shores of Java, Indonesia.

Ngélar is one of the words that might be able to describe the essence of Lair as a group. The word itself can be traced back to the locals’ culture of ‘going around in celebration of something.’ In their village, ngélar simply means a traveling performance, in which the performers would play music and go around the village, greeting the people around them as they move from place to place, or simply within their immediate surroundings, indicating that there is something nearby that is being celebrated.

Lair is simply in love with ‘journey,’ ‘time,’ and all of their interactions. Ngélar, for them, is a representation of their journey. How they go around, interacting and communicating, to celebrating and making sense of everything that is going on within and around them. For Lair, Ngélar is a method, a creative process, and—as an album—a culmination of each of their journeys since the group’s founding.

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Mong Tong

Mystery

Release: 2020 / EU – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Recorded in their home studio in Taipei, this record is a psychedelic journey into Taiwanese folklore combined with the 80’s media obsession with the supernatural. It’s a record that manages to combine nostalgia and tradition with humor and an underlying intrinsic earthiness to create something unlike anything else out there. Brothers Hom Yu and Jiun Chi also play in Prairie Wwww and Dope Purple.

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LP | 2014 | EU | Reissue (Guruguru Brain)

Forest Of Lost Children

LP | 2023 | JP | Original (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2014 / EU – Reissue

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Originally released in 2014, now on the band's own Guruguru Brain imprint for the first time.

"Kikagaku Moyo here sound anything but lost, their child-like wonder manifested in a confident, courageous exploration of sound. Labels – psychedelic, folk, prog-rock, psychedelic-folk-mixed-with-prog-rock – do little to accurately reflect the spectrum of influences on display, let alone the more impactful realization of completeness in Kikagaku Moyo’s songs."

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Mong Tong

Tao Fire

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2023 / JP – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Dhidalah

Sensoria Ren Shi

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Where is space? Is it in our brain? Or is it outside the planet Earth? Dhidalah poetically answers the question with their newest album Sensoria. (Soma, Black Shrine) Two songs are made from their weekly jam session in Tokyo. The band leader, Gotoh usually records the session and shares it with (Masahito aka Bin and Ikuma) the other two members. After listening to the jam recording, they each get inspired by the flow of sounds and find a connection to the outside world. In the following week and with their own understanding, they try to recreate the (essence of the) jam. (Invader Summer, Dead) Track 2 and 3 are written by Ikuma, who is known to be a natural space head guitar monster with his own interpretation of space. The last 20-minute long Black Shrine was inspired by the Japanese folklore Yokai, the spiritual and sometimes shapeshifting creatures living in the dark mountains of Japan. Space is free space, Sensoria is a thoughtful, supernatural example of a Japanese trio space. How is your space like? Deep in the middle of the night, or in bright daylight, in the smallest of rooms, to the vastness of the forest, listening to Sensoria will open you up to a new sense/kind of space.

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LP | 2022 | JP | Original (Guruguru Brain)

Kumoyo Island

31,99 €*

LP | 2018 | EU | Reissue (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2022 / JP – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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In many ways Kumoyo Island represents the culmination of a journey for Kikagaku Moyo. While their decade-long career can be summarized as a series of kaleidoscopic explorations through lands and dimensions far and near, there's a strong intention in each of their works to take the listener to a particular place, however real or abstract they may be. In that sense, the title and cover art for the band's fifth and final album draws you into a magical mass of land surrounded by water-but the couch suggests that Kumoyo Island may not be a fleeting stop, but rather a place of respite, where one could pause and take it all in. Reconvening at Tsubame Studios in Asakusabashi, Tokyo, where their earliest material had been recorded, the five members of Kikagaku Moyo found new inspiration in a familiar and comfortable environment. With their adopted homebase of Amsterdam under lockdown and their touring activities halted due to the pandemic, the band felt a renewed sense of freedom being back in shitamachi, or the old downtown area of their hometown. With unrestricted time in the studio, they began to build upon the demos and song fragments they'd amassed since their last tour. In the 1.5 months spent in Tokyo, everything started to come together. "Monaka", its name taken from a type of Japanese wafer sweets, takes melodic inspiration from traditional minyo folk styles, while "Yayoi Iyayoi" is a rare instance of the band singing in their native tongue, its evocative lyrics utilizing archaic words taken from old poetry and nature books found in one of the many secondhand bookstores of Tokyo. For "Meu Mar", an Erasmos Carlos cover, the original Portuguese lyrics were translated into English, then to Japanese. Strangely enough, the words seem to conjure an image of the protagonist floating among the clouds, looking down upon Tokyo Bay. In fact, it may be possible to draw a parallel between the topography of the band's home country-an island nation, surrounded by bodies of water-and the mysterious isle of Kumoyo. Are they one and the same? Has the band finally made it back home? It's up to the listener to decide.

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Minami Deutsch

With Dim Light

24,99 €*

LP | 2019 | US | Original (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2018 / EU – Reissue

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Dhidalah

Threshold

23,99 €*

Release: 2019 / US – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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First full-length record
Since 2013, Dhidalah has hailed from the Tokyo underground as a space rock power trio 7Since 2013, Dhidalah has hailed from the Tokyo underground as a space rock power trio. The band name derives from the Japanese legend of the Giant Gods -- known as the creaters of mountains, lakes and islands. Dhidalah plays improvisational music performances inspired by various genres from stoner/doom to kraut rock. Their first EP ' No Water ' was released by Guruguru Brain in 2017. The EP was internationally acclaimed, resulting in 2 shows at the 2018 Roadburn Festival as their first European debut. Dhidalah will release their first album in fall 2019, influenced by all aspects of outer space. They will be touring Europe and introducing these new songs. Dhidalah is comprised of Guitarist Ikuma Kawabe (ex Church of Misery), bassist/vo Kazu Gotoh and Robin (ex Minami Deutsch) who has joined as their new drummer.

This is their first full-length record. With this record, they added a krautrock influence to their Eastern doom sounds.

The band leader Gotoh says that the concept is about the evolution of the human race and the beginning of the universe. For fans of Ashra Tempel, Earthless, and Fuzz/Echo pedals.

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LP | 2013 | JP | Reissue (Guruguru Brain)

34,99 €*

Release: 2013 / JP – Reissue

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Repress! This Tokyo band started channeling the spirits of the Japanese psychedelic underground in the Summer of 2012, quickly developing the sound of '60s psychedelia to a breathtaking degree. The band's s/t debut exerts an elemental power. Enlivening its sound with sitars, percussive drums, theremins, wind instruments and ethereal vocals, the band manages to sound powerfully spacious and lazily serene all at once.

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LP | 2013 | EU | Reissue (Guruguru Brain)

12" | 2022 | JP | Original (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2013 / EU – Reissue

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Kikagaku Moyo 1st self-titled album reissue. Originally released by Cosmic Eye Records in Sep 2013. Kikagaku Moyo's debut album exerts an elemental power. Enlivening their sound with sitars, percussive drums, theremins, wind instruments and ethereal vocals, the band manages to sound powerfully spacious and lazily serene all at once. Their songs can be light as air, or heavy as earth. comes with digital download Many evolve out of intense experiences of engagement with the natural world. The album’s first track, “Can You Imagine Nothing?” was written over a night spent jamming on a suspended footbridge in remote mountains. As the song progressed the bridge began to sway, making band members feel as though they were floating weightless in midair. =Band Description= Kikagaku Moyo started in the summer of 2012 busking on the streets of Tokyo.

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Hitomi Moriwaki

Subtropic Cosmos

LP | 2019 | JP | Reissue (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2022 / JP – Original

Genre: Rock & Indie

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Subtropic Cosmos is the international debut album by Japanese artist Hitomi Moriwaki.

Composed and recorded at her Fukuoka home during the worldwide pandemic between 2020-2022, the album was produced by Hideki Urawa, who has also worked with Kikagaku Moyo and other musical acts on Guruguru Brain. Hitomi Moriwaki is a multidisciplinary artist working with a wide range of mediums besides music, including: magazines, ceramics, digital art, and animation.

"Subtropic Cosmos" in particular is a wonderful work that conveys the "joy of making things" to listeners, as it is filled with various influences from her diverse activities.

As suggested by the album title, most of the songs were created under the unprecedented conditions of corona--and as a result, were inspired by the consciousness of traveling through imaginary foreign lands and nature. As if adventuring through the universe inside of her own mind, Moriwaki's versatility is best experienced through her fearless fusion of hip-hop, pop and experimental music. Through a lens of psychedelic production by Hideki Urawa, this album is a truly special, one-of-a-kind space experience for listeners to enjoy and embark upon.

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Dhidalah

Threshold 2022 Repress

28,49 €* 29,99 € -5%

LP | 2024 | Original (Guruguru Brain)

Release: 2019 / JP – Reissue

Genre: Rock & Indie

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This is their first full-length record. With this record, they added a krautrock influence to their Eastern doom sounds. The band leader Gotoh says that the concept is about the evolution of the human race and the beginning of the universe. For fans of Ashra Tempel, Earthless, and Fuzz/Echo pedals.

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Lair

Ngelar

44,99 €*