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Muyubyosha - 一期一会 review




Bandcamp music player
Reviewer:
8.7

28 users:
7.29
Band: Muyubyosha
Album: 一期一会
Release date: May 2018


01. Sitting For The Road
02. If Return - A Mirror Glance
03. Never Through A Threshold
04. No Premature Celebrations
05. Never Ailments On Oneself
06. No Clinking Of Glasses

A lot of music is described as nightmarish, but just because it's evil and visceral and foreboding doesn't mean it's nightmarish if it feels too vivid. Muyubyosha aka Sleepwalker make nightmarish music that is actually dreamy. And no, not Deafheaven-ish dreamy.

Both the band and the album title are in Japanese, but the album title roughly translates to For This Time Only, Never Again, and the band name can already be seen. Muyubyosha is pretty out-there. "Avant-garde" gets thrown-out a lot these days, sometimes justified, sometimes not, but Muyubyosha are really hard to pinpoint or to compare to anything else. You're gonna have to hear it to believe it.

While in some ways rooted in atmospheric black metal, the music is so disjointed and cacophonous and the production so hazy, murky, and off-kilter that you're left to wonder what's going on. Taking cues from noise rock to sludge metal to free jazz, the effect is almost always disorienting and terrifying. The bass-heavy live-in-studio-with-overdubs production and the occasional grooves do make the listening a bit more dynamic and engaging in certain sections if you choose to ignore how nauseous everything else is - so whichever few moments do feel like conventional music are there for sure, but scattered and never lasting.

The spooky vocals are more often than not shrieked but at such a low volume that they feel like distant whispers, almost like just another part of the subconscious. They do take center-place from time to time, and when they do, they massively increase the aggression of the music. The relative rarity of those moments does make them more impactful when they come. The instrumentation is quite technical, and its clear that these musicians can hold their own and could write a proper album with proper music if they wanted to, but everybody else is already doing that, and no one is making cacophonous and nauseating music that actually sounds masterfully crafted instead of amateurishly, randomly put together.

The effect of this album is certainly psychedelic in a way. Like a really, really bad trip or that nightmare where you wake up feeling like you fell. And just like that it's over. 23 minutes that certainly feel like they lasted forever. Inland Empire in a pill. Take it here.


Rating breakdown
Performance: 9
Songwriting: 8
Originality: 10
Production: 8





Written on 18.06.2018 by Doesn't matter that much to me if you agree with me, as long as you checked the album out.


Comments

Comments: 17   Visited by: 183 users
18.06.2018 - 17:09
Karlabos
Meat and Potatos
Why do you guys call 夢遊病者 Sleepwalker?
----
"Aah! The cat turned into a cat!"
- Reimu Hakurei
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18.06.2018 - 17:20
Marcel Hubregtse
Grumpy Old Fuck
Written by Karlabos on 18.06.2018 at 17:09

Why do you guys call 夢遊病者 Sleepwalker?



Because that's what 夢遊病者 means in English.
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Member of the true crusade against European Flower Metal

Yesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow is out of sight
Dawn Crosby (r.i.p.)
05.04.1963 - 15.12.1996

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18.06.2018 - 18:00
LuciferOfGayness
Account deleted
That score -1 I would prefer the japanese name as we should stop gloryfying ourselves and our worthless existence. If the band name is kept in angloterian then the title of the album should be translated as well.

Nice album this. I still feel though that this is a warmup to their best albums which will be lengthier.
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18.06.2018 - 18:48
Karlabos
Meat and Potatos
Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 18.06.2018 at 17:20

Written by Karlabos on 18.06.2018 at 17:09

Why do you guys call 夢遊病者 Sleepwalker?



Because that's what 夢遊病者 means in English.

That kinda sounds like calling Der Weg einer Freihet "The Way of a Freedom" instead of the actual name...
----
"Aah! The cat turned into a cat!"
- Reimu Hakurei
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18.06.2018 - 18:54
Marcel Hubregtse
Grumpy Old Fuck
Written by Karlabos on 18.06.2018 at 18:48


That kinda sounds like calling Der Weg einer Freihet "The Way of a Freedom" instead of the actual name...


Not entirely because one can easily search that whereas those Japanes characters are hard as fuck to search for
----
Member of the true crusade against European Flower Metal

Yesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow is out of sight
Dawn Crosby (r.i.p.)
05.04.1963 - 15.12.1996

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18.06.2018 - 19:49
X-Ray Rod
Skandino
Guys, it really isn't that hard to figure out why the name was translated for search-engine reasons. Jeez.

As for the band. Fuck yeah! Hella weird stuff. Checked them out a while ago but still have not given them enough time to sink in. A bad trip is indeed the best way to describe it.
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Written by BloodTears on 19.08.2011 at 18:29
Like you could kiss my ass
Written by Milena on 20.06.2012 at 10:49
Rod, let me love you.
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18.06.2018 - 22:25
Marcus
Doit Like Bernie
If anyone wants their bandcamp site that doesn't blind you with an awful color scheme, here you go https://sentientruin.bandcamp.com/album/-
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20.06.2018 - 19:51
Rating: 9
(o> . )

Written by Marcus on 18.06.2018 at 22:25

If anyone wants their bandcamp site that doesn't blind you with an awful color scheme, here you go https://sentientruin.bandcamp.com/album/-

I reckon this one's even easier on the eyes https://vnkv.bandcamp.com/album/--2
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20.06.2018 - 21:29
Rating: 6
Kuroboshi

You should just have the Japanese pronunciation instead of a translation. It's Muyubyosha.
Btw, 一期一会 (ichigo ichie) does not mean For This Time Only, Never Again. Literally it means, one time, one meeting. It means that it's a once in a lifetime meeting. No negative connotation at all.
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22.06.2018 - 16:05
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
By popular demand, I changed the band title from a translation to a transliteration of their bandname
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Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking
One day there will be no heart at all?
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22.06.2018 - 16:06
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
Written by Kuroboshi on 20.06.2018 at 21:29

You should just have the Japanese pronunciation instead of a translation. It's Muyubyosha.
Btw, 一期一会 (ichigo ichie) does not mean For This Time Only, Never Again. Literally it means, one time, one meeting. It means that it's a once in a lifetime meeting. No negative connotation at all.

Should we use Muyūbyō-sha or Muyubyosha?
----
Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking
One day there will be no heart at all?
Loading...
22.06.2018 - 16:26
Marcus
Doit Like Bernie
Written by (o> . <o> ) on 20.06.2018 at 19:51

I reckon this one's even easier on the eyes https://vnkv.bandcamp.com/album/--2

Maybe it's just personal preference, but I find the dark grey text over a black background used by their Japanese label borderline unreadable. The US label is sooo much better (black on white or vice versa is ideal)
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24.06.2018 - 14:17
WayTooManyCDs

I think transliteration is fine but the one chosen isn't accurate for Romaji. In hiragana the name would be written むゆう びょうしゃ which would translate to English characters as Muyuu Byousha. The line over either a "u" or an "o" means that a "u" is added to elongate the sound. (cue *The More You Know...* graphic)
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24.06.2018 - 17:51
Rating: 6
Kuroboshi

Written by RaduP on 22.06.2018 at 16:06

Should we use Muyūbyō-sha or Muyubyosha?

There are many different ways to write it, none of them are "correct", as the correct one is just how it's written in Japanese.
As WayTooManyCDs says, just transcribing each character is Muyuu (dream) Byousha (sick person), but it's not very common. I would rather say though, that showing the elongation with bars i.e., Muyūbyō-sha, is not that common. Often you just skip it altogether (common in names for example, when Japanese go abroad), like the right one. There is also an inbetween, where you elongate 'o's with ou, but don't elongate u's (Muyubyousha). I'd say, bo with 'Muyubyosha', it looks the cleanest. They're all OK though.
(Also, they don't have spaces in written Japanese, which is why you can add a space if you want, or skip it).
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24.06.2018 - 18:03
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
I'll just leave it like that
----
Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking
One day there will be no heart at all?
Loading...
25.06.2018 - 04:40
WayTooManyCDs

Written by Kuroboshi on 24.06.2018 at 17:51

Written by RaduP on 22.06.2018 at 16:06

Should we use Muyūbyō-sha or Muyubyosha?

There are many different ways to write it, none of them are "correct", as the correct one is just how it's written in Japanese.
As WayTooManyCDs says, just transcribing each character is Muyuu (dream) Byousha (sick person), but it's not very common. I would rather say though, that showing the elongation with bars i.e., Muyūbyō-sha, is not that common. Often you just skip it altogether (common in names for example, when Japanese go abroad), like the right one. There is also an inbetween, where you elongate 'o's with ou, but don't elongate u's (Muyubyousha). I'd say, bo with 'Muyubyosha', it looks the cleanest. They're all OK though.
(Also, they don't have spaces in written Japanese, which is why you can add a space if you want, or skip it).


I do admit that it would be better as one long word, probably Muyūbyōsha. When I really thought about it, Japan tends to use the bar over the vowel so someone who is native to Japan would likely be able to identify the meaning of that Romaji easily.

While it's not the end of the world either way, if the point is to represent the language properly then Muyubyosha is just not accurate. If someone was trying to find the meaning of that word they'd never be able to do it because elongated words in Japanese (aka adding a bar or a "u") change the meaning. It'd be like saying "let's have a cat" because you decided the "h" in "chat" wasn't necessary. It is true that people's names tend be westernized and shortened for the convenience of those unfamiliar with the language but that also makes it far more difficult to translate those names back into Japanese. Accuracy isn't important in that context because no one is worrying about the meaning but in an art context, like music, I think the meaning of the words matter.
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25.06.2018 - 05:20
Karlabos
Meat and Potatos
Nice. You guys changed to the correct name.
The extra "u" matter on the transliteration, as Kuroboshi said, is more about what's common and what's not rather than doing the exact correct hiragana to english letters transition.
Pick a word like Tokyo for example, it actually should be Toukyou, but heh... Nobody writes it like that.
----
"Aah! The cat turned into a cat!"
- Reimu Hakurei
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