Naoki Zushi IV

Double LP - gatefold, tip-on sleeve, black vinyl - edition of 500 worldwide. RIYL: Hallelujahs, Nagisa Ni
Te, Roy Montgomery, Grouper, Manuel Gottsching. With IV, World Of Echo inaugurates a series of reissues by Japanese guitarist,
Naoki Zushi. Perhaps best known for his stellar guitar contributions to psych folk group, Nagisa Ni Te, Zushi has had a parallel career,
for several decades, slowly releasing solo albums that spotlight his exultant guitar playing. Originally released to CD only by Shinji
Shibayama of Nagisa Ni Te’s Org imprint in 2018, IV has Zushi playing and writing at a peak, its six songs slowly unfurling with a kind
of paradoxical understated grandeur. This is psychedelic guitar music at its most paced and considered, yet given to flights of
inspiration, and in this respect, Zushi sits within a lineage of guitarists who’ve used their instrument both as textural anchor and
improvisatory tool – think of figures like Phil Manzanera and Robert Fripp, but also Roy Montgomery, Liz Harris of Grouper, even Tom
Verlaine on his instrumental solo albums. Like those artists, Zushi locates moments of deep emotional resonance amidst luxuriant
textural and melodic exploration. Zushi’s history stretches back to the mid 1970s. While for many, he first appeared on the scene as a
founding member of noise legends Hijokaidan, alongside Jojo Hiroshige, his musical contributions predate that encounter. He started
out playing progressive rock and improvised music, making home recordings of when he was in high school. He was a member of
Rasenkaidan (Spiral Staircase) alongside Hiroshige and Idiot (Kenichi Takayama), the group that soon mutated into Hijokaidan
(Emergency Staircase). Zushi and Takayama would soon form Idiot O’Clock, in 1982; Zushi also led his own Naoki Zushi Unit, starting
in 1983. But for many, Zushi’s first significant appearance on record was as a member of Shinji Shibayama’s mid-eighties psych-pop
group, Hallelujahs, whose sole album was recently reissued on vinyl. That group mutated into Nagisa Ni Te, and Zushi has played a
significant role as their lead guitarist for several decades. His own solo music has appeared sporadically – Paradise (1987),
Phenomenal Luciferin (1998), III (2005) and IV, with a few recent, meditative offerings, For My Friends’ Sleep (2021) and Nocturnes
(2022). With IV, though, Zushi achieved something remarkable, a kind of extended exploration of the time-altering properties of
echoplexed, hypnotically spiralling guitar interplay. The opening ‘Mirror’, “a song about the mirror inside me,” Zushi explains, starts out
as a lush psych-folk song, slow and gentle, but soon takes to the skies with a cat’s cradle of Fripp-esque guitars, before thick, droning
chords sweep the song to a drowsy coda. ‘Nocturne’ weaves silver skeins of guitar melody around a cyclical chord pattern; it gathers
energy and quiet intensity through insistent repetition. The rest of the album explores the nuance Zushi can draw out of simple
elements, building on what ‘Mirror’ and ‘Nocturne’ offer – the profundity of a chord change; the melancholy of a few quietly sighed
words; the exhilaration of a guitar solo bursting out of the speakers; the subtle shifts in emotional register offered by tone and touch.
Throughout, there’s something quiet, yet ineffable, shading the contours of the songs, such that it makes perfect sense when Zushi
says, “What I want to express through music may be ‘sense of mystery’.” A few of the songs had their basic parts recorded at LM
Studio and Studio Nemu with Shibayama and Masako Takeda joining on bass and drums, respectively; much of the album, however,
was tracked at Zushi’s home studio. That seems appropriate for a collection of songs that are expansive in their intimacy. Asked what
drove the sessions, Zushi answers, “I thought I’d make IV an album that particularly focuses on the guitar play.” And focus it does, as
Zushi’s sky-scraping, soaring, elemental tone is front and centre throughout. But these are no guitar heroics; rather, Zushi uses the
guitar as conduit and diviner, a tool for spirit location, and IV is his most eloquent expression yet of such singular magic.