MAINLINER / Psychedelic Polyhedron / CD Fractal 030 / LP Fractal 001

MAINLINER / Psychedelic Polyhedron / CD Fractal 030

Aquarius Record website - List n°203, 17 December 2004 (USA) 

The new cd from Japanese psychedelic power trio MAINLINER is actually a reissue of their previously vinyl-only Psychedelic Polyhedron LP from back in '97, which was MAINLINER's second album, though a lot of folks never saw it. At last it's now on cd for all you MAINLINER fans who missed out on that long-gone import vinyl. Huh? No, I'm not shouting at you. It's just that putting MAINLINER in all-caps seems like a fitting way to indicate how loud and distorted and blown-out and in-the-red these guys are. But you know that already. Alongside bassist Asahito Nanjo's other band High Rise these guys are the kings of Japanese garage acid fuzz speedfreak heavy psych, pretty much. Though, actually, on this record, the original two side-long cuts, "Show The Cloven Hoof" and "Cardinal Virtues", were slightly less bludgeoning than usual Mainliner fare, being dark, meandering improvs closer to another of Nanjo's projects, Ohkami No Jikan, than to the pedal-to-the-metal rock insanity of, say, Mainliner's perversely titled debut Mellow Out. But compared to almost anything else they're certainly over-the-top. And this compact disc reish includes a bonus third track also from '97, a riffier ten-minute rocker called "Solid Static" if somehow you need an adrenaline kick after those first two 20 minute tracks. In case you're curious, the line-up for this particular Mainliner album is the same as yet another of Nanjo's bands, Musica Transonic, the trio consisting of Nanjo with guitarist Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins)!

All-Music Guide website - December 2004 (Canada) 

First released as an LP in 1997, Mainliner's second album was also the French label Fractal's inaugural release. It was reissued on CD in October 2004, with a new catalog number and an 11-minute bonus track. Comparisons between Makoto Kawabata and Frank Zappa have been flying around ever since the Japanese guru has caught the ear of the international underground, but rarely has he been coming this close to the American guitar hero than on the opening minutes of "Show the Cloven Hoof" His electric wah-wah playing is extremely reminiscent of Zappa's work circa "Chunga's Revenge", minus the extra reverb and distortion. And the rhythm section isn't bad either! Actually, as far as Japanese supergroups go, Mainliner was one of the most powerful, drawing equally from the heaviness of High Rise's Asahito Nanjo's bass, Acid Mothers Temple's Kawabata's freak-out guitar playing, and Ruins's Tatsuya Yoshida's impossibly complex drumming. "Show the Cloven Hoof" is a side-long psychedelic rock suite, with solid segments that could have been written down and noisier jams. "Cardinal Virtues" also a side-long number, delves further into experimentation, with Kawabata exploring noisy textures and Yoshida often playing offbeat. The music comes back to a rocker edge in the last minutes, but it spends most of its duration in the ethereal pastures of AMT's more exploratory realms. "Solid Static" a track recorded at the same studio sessions and added to the CD reissue, is actually a song, with lyrics sung by Nanjo, and an overall heavy acid-rock stance that is closer to High Rise or Musica Transonic than the previous pieces. The VU needles are deeply in the red in this one, but the mad riff and Kawabata's impossible solos make up for any lack of high fidelity. "Psychedelic Polyhedron" remains one of Mainliner's strong statements and it is a pleasure to see it back in print.
François Couture

MAINLINER / Psychedelic Polyhedron / LP Fractal 001

Opprobrium - n°4 - December 1997 (New-Zealand)

Hajime Koizumi out, Tatsuya Yoshida in, making the line up that of Musica Transonic but the sound nothing like Musica Transonic. And not much like Mainliner either - both of the two side-long tracks and the album as a whole are so non-fast and take such a long time to approximate a Mainliner-esque speed of intensity that some listeners may even find this "disappointing" in some pathetically microscopic way. But fuck them - this is deliriously indulgent wah-reverb-soaked six-string psychedelic excess, and anyone who cannot understand that its less frenetically breakneck speed offers another way to love an outrageously great band can either purchase Mainliner Sonic or direct their custom towards the psych-collector dealer dolt market, where lots and lots of records costing ten times as much (as even a French import LP) but possessing one-tenth of the worth are readily available. No one ever said life would be easy for band who with one 30-minute album have coined a sound so remarkable that it immediately becomes theirs’ for the rest of known time.
Nick Cain

Nougat - n°1 (USA)

Keeping track of Asahito Nanjo and his many groups - High Rise, Mainliner, Musica Transonic, Toho Sara, etc. - is confusing enough because they’ve each put out about three albums, but it’s even more head-scratching when he changes approaches not just from group to group but from album to album by the same group. Take the Mainliner LP Psychedelic Polyhedron - those of you expecting the ridiculo-amped in-the-red speed-metal riffing of Mainliner’s two American CDs on Charnel House (Mellow Out and Sonic) may be nonplussed by the approach on Psychedelic Polyhedron : exquisite lost-in-space death-blues psych-meandering in the form of two eighteen-to-twenty-minute tracks that wander wherever they damn well please, and it’s a ride worth taking. Closer to slow-jam High Rise or Fushitsusha than anything Mainliner has previously done, it reminds me even more of Side One of Ash Ra Tempel’s Join Inn, but occupying it’s own Hendrix-Hazel-Holding Company downer-zone, and when Nanjo starts singing an ominous, fuzzed-out vocal late in the first track (which has a title that should make Slayer envious : "Show the cloven hoof") things really start melting down exquisitely.
Brad Sonder

Crohinga Well - n°14 - 1998 (Belgium)

Mainliner is a Tokyo trio with the same lineup as Musica Transonic : Asahito Nanjo (bass), Makoto Kawabata (guitar) and Tatsuya Yoshida (drums) released 3 CDs for PSF Records between 1995/97 with heavy, noisy improvised music. Mainliner’s sound is more structured and melodic, as can be heard on their 1996 Mellow Out CD (Charnel House). The Psychedelic Polyhedron LP features 2 side-long improvisations with various forms of guitar psych as dominant influences: "Show the cloven hoof" is a 6-part acid jam with stoned, echoing vocals fading in and out mysteriously. Side B features : "Cardinal virtues", over 19’ of acid rock improvisation, sheer wah wah heaven. Asahito Nanjo and Makoto Kawabata are gifted with inexhaustible and versatile musical energy : together with tabla player Yasuda Hisashi they also form Toho Sara, a trio with an acoustic/ethnic/trance repertoire. Asahito Nanjo is also the bass player/vocalist of High Rise, of course. Psychedelic Polyhedron is any guitar freak’s wet dream, available as a limited edition (500 numbered copies) on a new french label. Go for it

Ongaku Otaku - n°3 - 1998 (USA)

This LP shows a different side of Mainliner, apart from the sheer, mountainous riffs of the group’s'' CD releases. Each side is a single nineteen-minute track. The first, "Show the cloven hoof", is made of six movements that flow together as one song. This is slow, haunting music that concentrates on guitar sounds and noises rather than heavy rocking. It has some eerie vocals partwat through, and overall is a somewhat atmospheric piece. "Cardinal virtues" is nineteen minutes of guitar-led jamming that is still more laid-back than the intensity of their CDs but it'll nonetheless cleanse your brain just fine. It’s cool to see a different side of Mainliner, and see that they can stretch a bit and still keep their own sound. Get it.
Mason Jones