Yonin Bayashi 1 (Hatachi no Genken, Ishoku, Golden Picnic, Printed Jelly)

 

Lots of playfulness with the cover art, the pipe-wielding sloth is priceless. Despite being described as prog, these albums are all minimally so in my opinion, starting with ssw and folky vocal tracks, moving through more developed songs, rock compositions, simple hard rock, a little bit of fusion guitarwork, there's really little progressive here.  Occasionally the band does shine and guitarmaster Morizono is always stunning. Really surprising to me that I never came across this artist before.

Discogs says:

An influential Japanese rock group that formed in 1970. They are generally regarded as experimental progressive rock. They broke up in 1979, but reformed in the late 80s for special live performances which continues to present day.

'Experimental progressive rock' is pretty ridiculous in the context of these early records, but they definitely did lean into that direction by the end of their run in the 70s when sadly experimental and progressive became verboten musical elements in favour of utter simplicity as long term trend which I sadly note continues to this day, with some exceptions. 

From the sloth album which came out in 1974, Ping Pong etc., clearly a kind of Pink Floyd influence with the organ front and centre:

A track from the next album called Continental Laidback Breakers if eerily reminiscent, this time, of the classic Gryphon medieval-influenced prog, and sometimes I know the classic UK Stackridge of Slark fame made instrumentals like this one:

If only the remainder of the record was along those wonderful creative lines! Of course, such is not to be.

And despite the great cover of Printed Jelly from 1977 I didn't really find too much at all of interest when it comes to genuine progressive rock or fusion. It seems to be mostly made up of basic rock, oddly enough. Especially annoying to me is the fact its genre description is listed as prog.  Even on the level of songwriting, it doesn't compare to a band like the marvelous School Band, remember them?