It’s rare to find someone bridging the gap between Jethro Tull, Marc Bolan’s T-Rex, The Orb, and Toumani Diabate, but it seems this world can support only one Lion Merry. Simply scroll down to the bottom of this post, past the download link, and know that I could have easily gone into multiple rows to categorize the kind of music you’ll hear in Lion Merry’s ドン・キホーテの従者 (aka Don Quixote’s Squire). Is Lion Merry (the nome de plume of Masato Ueda) an outsider artist, a musical visionary, or some tireless eccentric looking to craft his masterpiece? Reality be damned. Lion Merry is all of that and more.
Lion Merry is one of those musicians you’re bound to encounter as you dig deep into the liner notes of many of Japan’s most outré musical works from the 80’s and early ‘90s. A keyboardist by trade, it was this Tokyoite that added his leftfield musical ideas to various groups at the forefront of Japan’s cutting-edge New Wave and experimental art rock scene.
Whether it was with his original band Virgin VS (with the equally indescribable Morio Agata) or the absolutely sprawling/stunning Metro Farce collective, it was Lion Merry who injected a very Eno-esque sleight of hand and kaleidoscopic sonic seasoning to all of their work. On stage his signature mane of glory became a calling card that that night’s performance would be a special one, as well. And as his taste in music became more integrated in the groups he joined, one could see that those groups felt at ease to follow whatever that muse could be.
Eventually, as all things come to pass, Lion Merry grew tired of being in the background, and sought to take the foreground, branching out on his own. Early works soundtracking various anime and “image” albums proved that under his own vision, Lion had touchstones a bit further afield than his own bands. His love of classic “toontown” pop, prog, folk, and reggae, were one of the few (of many) influences one could hear in his soundtrack work. Little-known EPs Merrinology + Another Synthesizer Music showed another side, a side in tune with experimental sound design and electronic music of various stripes. So, when it came to creating his first full piece of music under his own name, Lion seemed to be gunning to the stratosphere to combine all those aspects of himself.
The conceit of this album seemed simple, at least to him. What happened to the great album-length concept records of the past? Lion had grown up on albums like Thick As A Brick and Tommy, he’d also been inspired from a young age by groups like the Fairport Convention who could tell a story in a whole song. The choice was easy for Lion — he’d write a concept album of his own.
Rather than do things the easy way, Lion chose to tackle one of literature’s most beguiling stories: Miguel De Cervantes’s Don Quixote. But being who he is, Lion felt a spin on the tale was way past due. Rather than take on the theme of the epic windmill tilter, Lion chose to losely fabricate and tell the story of one Sancho Panza (as himself) speaking to the travels of his more known master…and enlist some of his sometime bandmates and future ones (in Jun Togawa) to “act” out, musically, certain roles to this tale.
With that idea in the back of his head, Lion could sprawl musically with little abandon but have a structure to keep the music/album tied together. Surprisingly, he’d write out a whole story first and then base his lyrics off that, I imagine, hopefully, much shorter tome. If you think this album reminds you of another, remember Kaoru Todoroki’s Uncle Calvin…, you wouldn’t be that far off.
So when you hear the birdsong and carrion call of “故郷を後にするドンモリオーネとその従者” beckoning to you a “good morning” at the start of the album, you have to know this twee bit of inspiration has a purpose — it’s just one vignette among many. “冒険が始まる” comes barrelling in fusing kalimba-led eccentric pop with B-52-esque twitchy moodiness. “首輪” sidesteps all that, preferring to move you with some glorious, almost jazz rock instrumental that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in an old Canterbury prog record.
With that out of the way, witness the shift from Jun Togawa’s pastoral guest spot in the quite Kevin Ayers-lilting, folksy “ダルシネーア姫”, another one of those songs that seems to combine the glory days of starry-eyed art rock and newfound electronic gadgetry, to the absolutely bananas, almost Resident’s-like sampledelic “ヴァカボンド ヴァーレスク・蜃気楼を見る・”. Featuring as much found sound as groovy chordal vamping, Don Quixote’s Squire is not your average concept album; it feels and sounds futuristic.
What else do you call something like “砂漠の魔法使い” that splits the difference between dark, Comus-like folk and weird, fourth world-esque “ethnic”-flavored atmosphere? When we think that rock is dead, I’m sure these are the kind of ideas that show there are various avenues yet to be fully explored.
Exploration. That glorious word can only explain how we get tracks like “コンドルに掴まって” where techno is used as a vehicle to make a surprisingly moody segue to the even more personal and experimental side of the conceit. Burbling and squirrelly, tracks like these play to a dance floor best designed in one’s own mind. And to follow that with “ドロンコ市場ポルカ・第二番”, a polka, of all things, tells you Lion Merry was far from self-serious.
The album winds down with some of my personal favorites, highlights like “ボルケイノ・メドレーA買い付け船乗り ドンモリオーネとの再会 B昔のコンビでやり直す” that are, once again, absolutely bonkers, groovy bits of quarter-formed ideas and bits and pieces, carvings from Africa, seeds from Asia and the Middle East, liquids from Old Europe, etc. all pieced together as communal, macro-emotional songs/things that sound unlike little else in the world. When so many albums sound of our world, with songs like this one and “ももう一度 ダルシネーア姫に会いに行く決心をする・蜃気楼を見る・” or “最後のワルツ” buttressing Don Quixote’s Squire (ドン・キホーテの従者), I find there’s still a joy in this life and in this world to find albums like this one and musicians just like Lion Merry who invite you into a universe in their world.
It’s what, like, 29 odd, long years since Lion Merry’s sole debut in 1992? Yet, it still sounds quite unlike anything. Guess only time knows why it takes so long to catch up.