"The new installment from Pirako Kurenai and Kageo’s Suishou no Fune is finally ready, and it's a true gem. Recorded in a Bonsai Shop in Tokyo, summer 2010, ‘Bonsai No Ie’ is a dream made out of floating guitar textures and vanishing vocal lines. Four spectral, naked pieces that stand as the core of Suishou no Fune’s poetry, where delicate folk moments, abstract blues riffs and oniric ballads concur in the realisation of the definitive psych experience. Close your eyes and abandon your senses to a journey through the land of ethereal joy and ecstatic abandon. Comes in a beautiful professionally printed cover, specifically designed by artist Anya Kuts. Edition of 250 copies."
(8MM RECORS / Italy) http://www.8mmrecs.com/


This record's press release reads, "Recorded in a Bonsai Shop in Tokyo, summer 2010, ‘Bonsai No Ie’ is a dream made out of floating guitar textures and vanishing vocal lines." I like this sentence for all sorts of reasons. As it happens I also quite like this record. It's making me feel very relaxed. Little bit sleepy, actually. I shouldn't have woken up so early this morning. Anyway, on here we've got four songs and they're all loooong. Relatively minimal echoey guitars drift about while a soothing reverbed vocal gracefully sings over the top. The vocals are well integrated into the overall sound, I think. They never seem intrusive and they always add something welcome to what's going on, which is so hard to do with stuff this meditative. In fact, it kind of sounds like Woods if they slowed right down and went a bit more dreampop. There's a weird kind of rock out section at the end of the first side where everything goes quieter instead of louder which is a bit of an unsettling effect. Quite an uplifting section nonetheless. The whole album's very much on this whole ethereal slowcore tip to marvellous effect. The spooky, wibbly fingerpicked guitar lines in the closing track especially caught my attention. They're simultaneously soothing and a little unsettling, which kind of sums up the whole listening experience on offer here.
(Norman Records / UK) http://www.normanrecords.com/


New album from Tokyo psych duo Suishou No Fune in an edition of only 250 copies: recorded live in a Bonsai Shop in Tokyo (!?!) this is Kageo and Pirako at their most celestial, with great sweeps of transparent dream tone that dissolve inspired versions of early material in clouds of fuzz and candyfloss. Suishou No Fune are obvious heirs to the whole Rallizes/Fushitsusha/Shizuka sound but with a focus more on blurry drone and vertical ascensions so if you’re a particular fan of the whole space-ballad style of the PSF roster – and who isn’t? – this is the one you’ve been waiting for. Some of the guitar lines are so ornate and transportive that at points it feels like being in the centre of one of The Grateful Dead’s most blasted matrixes, stepping way beyond the terrain of the song into previously unmapped sonic territories. It’s a trip but with only 250 copies, it won’t stick around forever. Recommended.
(Volcanic Tongue UK) http://www.volcanictongue.com/


Gorgeous, hazed out trip through ethereal, ghostly guitar bliss captured live in 2010 courtesy of otherworldly Japanese psychonauts Suishou No Fune, eschewing anything remotely heavy or damaged in favor of sweet and elongated astral wandering. Like their psychedelic brethren, Suishou No Fune are capable of universe-quaking intensity when they want, channeling the awesome power of regret and a palpable sense of the unknown into something infinitely larger than the space hoping to contain it; here that intensity is dialed down and reworked into four pieces that are yearningly fragile, gentle, soothing and exploratory. The record reads like magic, grasping your hand tight as it flies you through spaces and pockets of reality carved out from the night, the stuff of stars and heavenly light glaring off your eyes and holding you close in its luminous embrace.
There's a warmth that permeates "Bonsai No Le," and it's not just from the pillowy washes of fuzz guitar that coat the songs like acid-drenched molasses. It comes from the intimacy of the performance, a naked and spectral communication between artist and audience that leaves nothing obscured. Suishou No Fune give everything, completely unafraid of sentiment or emotion; this music is reaching out to you because it wants to share something with you. You're meant to have a reaction to this. The earnestness and honesty present here practically beg for a dialogue. What that dialogue ultimately consists of is a matter between the listener and their heart; whether it's a memory or a feeling or an image makes little difference. What matters is the willingness to let the record's honesty work with you and extract something that is meaningful to you and you alone. It's privacy in terms of spectacle, confession in the context of performance.
And it's fucking beautiful. Suishou No Fune whip up a froth of swirling guitars, delicate and snaking their way through one another, creating vines of melody that shoot up into the sky, leaving the notion of reality far behind them. Lilting voices carry across the clouds, searching and prodding, pulling you closer with each breath. These vocals reach a wordless sort of ecstasy that's as impassioned as it is cracking, the feeling far exceeding the ability. I'm reminded of Keiji Haino, whose vocal explosions approach a similarly scarred emotional terrain. Suishou No Fune's work is far more inviting than Haino's, but the feelings present in both artists' output is too obvious to dismiss. Both reach deep into their own experiences and emerge with something almost frightening in its universality, an offer of connection that extends well beyond the reach of the physical. This music is experience. I can only imagine the power this performance must have had over those in attendance; just listening to this recording of it transports me to another place of consideration, a recess of allowance where experience recedes and perception blooms.
Like the flower adorning the cover, this record is open and unashamed of its own beauty. It's an invitation, a welcome, with no denials and no rules. This is completely for you. Few bands are as generous with what they do as Suishou No Fune; "Bonsai No Le" is a gift, and it's absolutely perfect.
(Emotionally Voided / U.S.A)
http://emotionallyvoided.blogspot.jp/2011/10/suishou-no-fune-bonsai-no-le-8mm.html


To κιθαριστικό ντουέτο των Pirako Kurenai και Kageo ίσως να είναι η τελευταίο εναπομείναν psych rock σχήμα από τη χώρα του ανατέλλοντος ηλίου. Έχοντας απολέσει μέσα στα 00ς τα περισσότερα μοναδικής ποιότητας σχήματα της εμβληματικής ετικέτας του χώρου PSF, οι Suishou No Fune με διάσπαρτες κυκλοφορίες σε δυτικές εταιρίες τα τελευταία χρόνια, αποτελούν μια σίγουρη λύση στο θέμα : που θα βρω να ακούσω spacey rock κιθάρε με θηλυπρεπή γιαπωνέζικα φωνητικά με την απαραίτητη δόση βαβούρας στην ηχογράφηση; Ηχογραφημένο σε ένα Bonsai Shop στο Tokyo το καλοκαίρι του 2010, το άλμπουμ περικλείει, χωρίς πολλές ανατροπές, στα τέσσερα μεγάλης διάρκειας κομμάτια όλο το ζουμί του λυρικού jap psych rock.Η ντελικάτες διπλές κιθαριστικές γραμμές δημιουργούν ανακλώμενους θαμπούς αλλά αιθέριους βόμβους που έχουν ως βάση αφηρημένα bluesy riffs. Εξελικτικά, οι μακροσκελείς συνθέσεις δεν εκρήγνυται σαν ηφαίστειο κιθαριστικού παροξυσμού, όπως στην περίπτωση των Fushitsusha ας πούμε, αλλά παίρνουν τη μορφή μιας χαλαρής ονειρικής μπαλάντας, που όταν προστίθεται τα κλαψιάρικα solos του Pirako και τα άτεχνα αλλά άκρως συναισθηματικά φωνητικά του, πλουτίζουν κομψά τον ήχο τους και τον στέλνουν μακριά σε νέα ψυχεδελικά ουράνια. Σίγουρα, ο ονειρώδης psych rock ήχος τους δεν αποτελεί παρθενογένεση : η κατανυκτική ατμόσφαιρα παραπέμπει στους υπερ-μελαγχολικούς Shizuka, οι μινόρε τόνοι στις κιθάρες στις πιο ατμοσφαιρικές στιγμές των Damon and Naomi, ενώ για κάποιο λόγο τα άγουρα υψίφωνα φωνητικά μου έφεραν στο μυαλό τους Woods.Όμως, πέρα από τις όποιες συγκρίσεις με παλιά και νέα συγκροτήματα, οι Suishou No Fune προσφέρουν εδώ ένα ακόμη καλαίσθητο psych rock τριπάκι - ταμάμ για τον ευαίσθητο στην ιαπωνικό λυρισμό ακροατή.
(SOUNDEYET Greece)
http://soundeyet.blogspot.com/2011/10/suishou-no-fune-bonsai-no-ie-2011.html