Sadistic Mika Band-Black Ship['74 Japan Glam-Rock]

Highly Recommended!
Excellent Glam-Rock with some Hard Rock touches

Second album by japanese glam rock band
the first one was posted on my blog sometime ago
they are one of the less glam-rock bands from japan
the other one i know is Vodka Collins
and if you didnt get that one yet do it!

A black ship was a Steam Boat

Biography from '74
When, three years ago, he formed a rock band, Kazuhiko Katoh ran into more than a little local opposition: the locality being Tokyo - the world's largest and most technologically advanced urban complex, simultaneously one of the most resistant to changes of attitude. The Japanese music business didn't appreciate Kazuhiko's move, not only beacause he was abandoning his position as one of the country's biggest solo stars, but also because a rock band was not considered a viable proposition in itself - it was suicidal, they said, to complete with Western rock 'n' roll on its own terms.

Which was precisely what Kazuhiko intended to do: no mere duplication of Western nabds - which in Tokyo would have been a safer bet commercially - but an original style of music. He sought out four of the most accomplished musicians in the country and together they began writing and rehearsing their own material, evolving an individual brand of music. It was bona-fide rock 'n' roll; it was also distinctly Japanese.

They became the Sadistic Mika Band. The name remains a mystery. Any explanation offered is likely to hide the truth; the Japanese after all are ultra-polite. (Certainly Tokyo is the world capital of S. & M., bondage and other arcane leisure activities). Anyway, Mika joined the band, as singer, odalisque and iconoclast. Beautiful, extrovert and unpredictable (by Japanese standards a total eccentric), she completed the band's line-up and clinched its distinctive identity: both musically and visually, original, sophisticated and bizarre.

About the same time Kazuhiko, in London (to buy a Rolls-Royce),

met Chris Thomas, producer of Pink Floyd, Procol Harum and Roxy Music,
and already an admirer of the Sadistic Mika Band.
It was arranged for him to produce the band's next album in Tokyo,
and the result was the stunningly impressive "Black Ship". Above all it confirmed the band's mystery in both composition and performance, and their right to recognition on a world scale. As on their first album (which the New Musical Express described as possessing the "finest album cover photo of the year"), the group's visual flair was demonstrated on "Black Ship" by the extraordinary image of the group floating - as if with wings in mid-air (an idea recently cribbed by a much more famous band). "Black Ship" shot into the Japanese charts - something which Western bands rarely achieve.

In Britain "Black Ship" received numerous critical accolades. John Ingham in Time Out called it "1975's most essential record". "Found at last, real rock 'n' roll in Tokyo", declared the New Musical Express. Sounds praised its "inventive and abrasive rock 'n' roll"; "an important new force", said Music Week; "this sextet will stagger you", announced Derek Jewell in the Sunday Times. ("Makes very little sense to me", complained the Disc reviewer). U.S. crtics were no less impressed: Cashbox called the band a "supermonster from Japan" playing "exciting commercial rock 'n' roll with an accuracy not possessed of many American groups"; "let the Occident beware", warned Circus magazine.
from here

thanks to opa-loka greece for sending this one

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