While Maher Shalal Hash Baz got their start in the early eighties group leader Kudo Tori has been involved with the Tokyo music underground since the late seventies, especially the Minor performance space, a formative scene for much of the Japanese avant-outsiders. But his first recorded appearance wasn't until 1980 on the Tenno album by Noise - a duo with wife-to-be Omura Reiko. Later documents exist of his time in groups like Snickers, the short-lived Tokyo Suicide (Suicide tribute band) the chaotic Sweet Inspirations, and Guys & Dolls. Throughout all these recordings you can detect the genesis of Maher in unrealised and primitive versions of songs from later albums, a similar shambolic looseness (nearing collapse in the early days) and at heart a pure pop sensibility.
During the eighties Kudo played with folk-psyche group Che-Shizu and the free-improv outfit A-Musik, through the latter becoming involved with a radical political group who carried out an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Japanese Emperor. Kudo later gave up these particular ideals turning instead to Christianity. Disillusionment with music led to him giving that up for periods of time too, and with his wife he eventually left Japan spending the later part of the nineties living in the UK.
Maher itself formed when Kudo met Nakazaki Hiro at a construction site in Tokyo where they were both working as day labourers. Upon discovering Nakazaki played the euphonium and shared a common interest in music Kudo asked him to join a group he wanted to form to get the effect of "the fine guitar riffing and wind instruments of Mayo Thompson's 'Dear Betty' combined with each other."
The group's first efforts were two cassette-only releases from 1985, the low-fi psychedelic pop a step away from the harsher sounds of earlier Kudo units, promising but unfocused and loose, like rehearsals for a later version of the band. Their first LP Maher Goes to Gothic Country recorded live in Kyoto and released in 1991 is the most polished work from any of Kudo's projects to that time though still steeped in the best kind of outsider primitivism...and released in an edition of only one hundred.
After some bewildering tracks on a couple of the PSF Tokyo Flashback CDs Maher delivered one of the essential musical documents of the nineties in the form of the triple CD/LP set Return Visit to Rockmass. This was recorded in 1995 but not released until 1997. Released on the obscure Org label, featuring 83 tracks with different mixes for the CDs and LPs and highly-priced even by Japanese standards, if it wasn't for the beatific songs within it would seem an act of perversity. Rockmass is a collection of glimmering psychedelic dream-pop. It's pop and surf roots feel comfortably familiar yet there's still the sense of outsiderness found in all of Kudo's work. Not surprising from someone with an affinity for the Godz, the Shaggs, Syd Barrett who often gets non-musicians to play his songs and thinks tuning destroys the music.
In 1999 thanks to a renewal of interest in Maher and some assistance from interested parties the band reformed for a live gig in Scotland. Shortly after the Kudos returned to Japan and new Maher material was recorded and released in 2000. Meanwhile the UK label Geographic put together a Maher retrospective spanning their entire career. Hopefully the revival of Maher Shalal Hash Baz will ensure this compilation is more than an epitaph for the group.
Discography
- M.S.H.B vol.1 cassette (D's Label, 1985)
- Pass over musings cassette (D's Label, 1985)
- January 14th, 1989 Maher Goes to Gothic Country LP (Org Records, 1991)
- "Uso no fudoki wa usu aoi/Jokyu no kyusoku wa kanashii mizuame" on Tokyo Flashback 2 comp. CD (PSF, 1992)
- "Utsubyo no kusuri/Kuniguni no yoru" on Tokyo Flashback 3 comp. CD (PSF, 1993)
- "Thinkin` bout you, baby" on Kitchen Tapes 90 comp. cassette (Kitchen Tapes, 1993)
- First Gig cassette (La Musica, 1997)
- Return Visit to Rockmass 3CD/3LP (Org Records, 1997)
- Souvenir de Mauve CD single (Majikick, 2000)
- From a summer to another summer (An Egypt to another Egypt) CD/DLP (UK, Geographic, 2000)
- "Unknown Happiness" b/w "Like a dog who wants to be loved, like a dog with its spirit broken" and "95 and a Half Avenue B, New York, New York" 7" single (UK, Geographic, 2000)