With a title like ‘Improvisation Anarchy’, you pretty much have the blessed assurance that the record will be either a right-on, spontaneous surge of electricity, or at least an entertaining disaster. Recorded in 1978–79, this patchwork quilt of straight-arrow punk and meandering synth-assisted psychedelia manages to be both at the same time. It should be noted that this kind of music was not common for 1970s West Japan before the ‘bubble economy’ of the 80’s allowed for more impulsive consumption of eccentric sounds. Indeed, as singer/guitarist Hide ‘Bide’ Fujiwara claims, there was at first a complete press blackout on the original punk bands within the band’s native Kansai: at least their Western counterparts could get publicity from being damned up hill and down dale by assorted guardians of the ‘common good’. Censorship within Japan came in the form of deeming something too socially irresponsible to even critique. And, unfortunately, it was effective for some time. 

So, to their credit, Ultra Bide stand with a few others from this time (who can also be found in Alchemy’s notable ‘no wave’ reissue series) as progenitors of what would become one of the wildest music scenes worldwide by the mid 1980’s. This whole album drips with youthful sincerity, a very Kansai-styled sense of humor loaded with sarcasm, and odd lyrical juxtapositions (see titles like “Yakuza Commune”, which also earns Ultra Bide points for parodying Japan’s ‘untouchables’ themselves). The singing is carried out in a manic, rasp-n-rant style punctuated by occasional Blixa Bargeld-like vocal tire squeals. Of course, it’s also sung in Kansai dialect, which is usually noted as being more fluid and not as bloodless as standard Tokyo-speak: undoubtedly another stab at the ‘serious’ culture which Ultra Bide was meant to be in opposition to. Many of the tracks on this compilation are recorded live in cozy ‘live houses’: so you can hear (amidst the tape hiss) the audience’s crazed, celebratory reactions to little more than Fujiwara shouting out “Kirawareru Mono!!” (roughly, ‘hated things’) over a lumbering Stooges bass line. Elsewhere, demented run-throughs of well-known children’s superhero themes and a ‘merry-go-round’ song receive similar reactions. You can practically hear the audience members’ split-second mental transitions from “what the hell?!!” to “Oh, I get it!! Ha ha!!” as the band progresses through these very rough-hewn tunes. Again, it must have come as a surprise to see and hear something so gleefully dismissive of criticism in this era of Japanese musical development. In one song, which features a skit/telephone conversation in English over a surf melody, played on a thin-sounding monosynth, Ultra Bide seem intent on making a parody of Western rock clichés and Japanese appropriations thereof, all the while using blissful, hyper instrumental chaos as a shield against the powers that be. 

Instrumentally, there are plenty of surprises to be had here- the participants seemingly throwing their entire weight into stomping on their FX boxes, overmodulating everything and spray-painting the walls with buzzy atonal synth when everything else fails. The band also goes through such anomalies as an over-emotive acoustic ballad and a handful of drummer-less, hyper-strummed garage freakouts with an unusual combination of naivete and know-how.

This record is also an interesting signpost owing to what its founding members are currently doing. Jojo Hiroshige has since moved on to being one of Japan’s premier ambassadors of improv music, as likely to fit in on a symposium as to sear one’s skull with molten metal guitar noise. Hide Fujiwara has assumed the Ultra Bide mantle for a different breed of NYC metropolitan heaviness that has 100 times the technical proficiency of the songs on this collection, and landed them a deal with the venerable Alternative Tentacles. But these are both very adult enterprises- anyone curious to know what the disaffected youth of Japan were up to, before ‘disaffected’ even became a journalistic buzzword, would and should be interested in this collection. And yes, the legions of electrified, pseudo-punk street musicians lining the pedestrian bridges of downtown Osaka could also use this lesson in recent history. Ultra Bide, in this configuration, could out-entertain them all even without a proper grasp of their instruments.