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The Apryl Fool - Apryl Fool (1969)

Track listing:
  1. Tomorrow's Child 4:24
  2. Another Time 7:23
  3. April Blues 4:17
  4. The Lost Mother Land (Part-1) 7:22
  5. Tanger 4:35
  6. Pledging My Time 3:45
  7. Sunday 6:07
  8. Honky Tonk Jam 2:03
  9. The Lost Mother Land (Part-2) 2:08

Notes

Japan 24-Bit Remaster

The Apryl Fool was a very accomplished late-'60s band from Japan whose lone, self-titled album is a great mixture of hard psych and blues-rock. Their best-known track is probably "The Lost Mother Land, Pt. 1," which was featured on the Japanese volume of QDK's Love, Peace and Poetry series, certainly one of the most crazed, over the top productions and performances in the entire series, with its massively phased and treated vocals and general menace.

But that tune is really the anomaly on the album, despite the prevalence of monstrous fuzz guitar on a number of tracks. At their heart, the Apryl Fool seem to be a blues-rock band, although one that was clearly experimenting with the burgeoning psychedelic scene. Tracks like "Another Time," "Honky Tonk Jam," and Bob Dylan's "Pledging My Time" are pretty straight blues-rock, and "April Blues" just adds some fuzz guitar to a boogie-woogie piano bit.

The other tracks up the psych quotient considerably, like on "Tomorrow's Child," with its Farfisa and wicked fuzz leads, or the aforementioned "The Lost Mother Land, Pt. 1." There are additional crazy tape effects on "The Lost Mother Land, Pt. 2." About half the tunes are in English and half in Japanese, but it's all good stuff. Historical footnote: years later, bass player Haruomi Hosono would become a member of one of Japan's most popular music groups ever, Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Haruomi Hosono (Hosono Haruomi, born July 9, 1947 in Minato, Tokyo) is a Japanese popular musician, best known internationally as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Hosono first came to attention in Japan as the bassplayer of the psychedelic rock band Apryl Fool, who released the album The Apryl Fool in 1969. Members from this band (including Hosono) then formed the influential folk-rock group Happy End. After Happy End disbanded, Hosono worked with a loose association of artists making "exotica"-style music under the title Tin Pan Alley.

In 1978, Hosono formed the Yellow Magic Orchestra with Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The Yellow Magic Orchestra (a.k.a. YMO) released a number of albums in the late 70s and early 80s to considerable acclaim both inside and outside Japan. After YMO disbanded in 1984, Hosono released a number of solo albums covering a variety of styles, including film soundtracks, and a variety of electronic ambient albums.