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Tokyo’s Voluntary Mother Earth are the sound of Acid Mothers Temple, Led Zep, Frank Zappa and They Might Be Giants encapsulated. Taken twice daily they’ll entertain and bemuse. Exceed that dosage and you could well find yourself trapped inside their mad and mangled cartoon world for good.
‘Unacceptable Vegetable’ is presented as a sequence of generally hard rocking skeletal structures dismantled and reassembled in true Zappa style, throwing in jazz, lounge, country and whatever else is at hand - the more unlikely the better. Add to this bonkers lyrics and song titles the likes of ‘Give us a Tomato’ and ‘Forgive my Penis’, and the bands’ own rather natty genre classification of ‘Eccent-rock’ becomes something of an understatement. But the minds of madmen are encased inside the bodies of some very able musicians and, on this recording at least; they’re as tight a band as you’ll encounter. Amidst the hard rock bluster, cosmic effects and comically lunatic interludes there are moments of fine virtuoso guitar playing.
But equally they prove that they can play loose, as for the bulk of ‘Forgive my Penis’, in which their humour comes to the fore with a spoof of the chorus to ‘Beat it’, substituted with the words ‘so she can eat it’, and it'd be worth a guess that what they’re alluding to would be sure to make your granny blush. Weird Al Jankovic would approve and Michael Jackson’s been well & truly out Wacko’d. This band are out there, although there is evidence that VMF do at times inhabit the same world as the rest of us, adding colour to everyday banality at every corner with lines such as 'I said “Just Water, Please” and She Gave me Sprite'. As an antidote to the mundane there can be few to match them.
RICHARD STOKOE
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