Drowning in the Sky

The first album by the late Yuzo Iwata is wild in an understated way – if such a thing is possible. If you come at it via his involvement with groups like the naif pop ensemble Maher Shalal Hash Baz, well, there are certainly some echoes of the everyday surreal of that group, but Iwata’s focus is much more on the mindwarping effects of psychedelicised guitar exploration; the opener, “Dung Beetles”, is woozy and delirious; “The Moth” is lo-fi Pink Floyd in miniature; the brutish edits of “Distance Of Memory” are dislocating. The miniatures that populate the first half of Drowning In The Sky make way for the spiralling electronics of “Garden Of Meteors/Wish” and the title song’s drum-and-strum meander; above it all, Iwata’s silvery, stretched-out guitar solos on, eternally. A beautifully singular outsider document.