Andrei Rikichi – ‘Caged Birds Think Flying Is A Sickness’ (2022)
By the time you recite the title, this 28-minute blast of fresh air will be almost over and you’ll be asking yourself “What the hell did I just hear?”
The latest in Bearsuit’s roster of quirky signings (Eamon The Destroyer, Harold Nono, Bunny & The Invalid Singers, et. al.), Rikichi is the international son of a Tokyo father and Bucharest mum who grew up in Switzerland and Belgium and now resides in London. Dumpster divers may have come across his previous releases as a member of such Belgian groups as The Unaccountable Red Mist Orchestra, but this is his opening salvo as a solo artist.
With a remit inspired by the Ramones (if it takes more than two minutes to say your piece, you’re a wanker in need of an editing machine), most of these “songs” are over before they begin. So you’ll probably have to listen three or four times before playing (as the saying goes) to catch all of Rikichi’s intricacies.
One can almost feel the bones crunch and the blood spurt on the opening gooshy industrial cacophony of the ‘Theme From The Butcher’s Parade’ (think Nine Inch Nails-meets-The Residents) and whilst sliding down the slippery, blood-soaked slope of the horror show ‘They Don’t See The Maelstrom’, you’ll appreciate Rikichi’s command of the studio and all its inherent madness and tricks, like a mad scientist version of Carl Stalling in a candy shop full of 21st century technological wonders.
Of course, that may not excuse the excessively glitchy ‘At Home I Hammer Ceramic Golfing Dogs’ (which did take longer to type than listen to) or the hurricane-induced whirlwind ‘Whatever Happened To Whitey Wallace?’ (I didn’t know he was missing), but there’s so much happening over, under, sideways, and down inside these Musique concrète creations (including the occasional operatic aria that would give Klaus Nomi a run for his tonsils – ‘This Is Where It Ends’) that you just have to sit back and let Rikichi have at it. Something impossibly surreal or wonderful or both is just around the corner and you only have to wait about 120 seconds to experience it.
Some tracks, like ‘Bags, Lyrics, New Prescription’ (which sounds like a typical day out for good ol’ Andrei) come off like cinematic cues for a film soundtrack to a non-existent film, while the 13-second ‘This’ will undoubtedly inspire reams of analysis in the British Journal of Aesthetics under such highbrow titles as “If A Song Lasts Less Than 15 Seconds, Can You Hear Enough Of It To Postulate And Defend Its Reason For Existing?” Which will most certainly end up being the title of a track on Rikichi’s next album. And ‘Death Of A Postman’ is one of the most beautifully sombre pieces of funeral music you’ll hear this year.
While the pingy Undersea World Of Jacques Cousteau bloop-bloop ‘Player Name – The Syracuse Apostle’ (look him up) stands tall at almost four minutes (maybe it should have been two separate songs? Sounds like it could have been), the “Hallelujah” chorus of ‘This Is Where It Started” (curiously, but necessarily imbedded in the middle of the album) segues seamlessly into ‘They Hide In The Dark Forest’ to such a degree that I wouldn’t be surprised if the punster in Rikichi didn’t actually record a single, 28-minute extravaganza and then take a razor blade to the tape, Brion Gysin-style and just randomly slice the tune into 14 segments. Sort of like a musical answer to The Human Centipede…and almost as demented!
Of course this is not the sort of thing you’ll put on for a romantic cuddle-up with the girl you want to bring home and introduce to mum, but there’s madness in Rikichi’s method of assembling found sounds, distorted segues, disjointed rhythms, atonal noise, and the odd (odd?) electronic bursts of brilliance (how’d he do that?) that justifies the sign outside his recording studio which reads “Quiet! Genius At Work Creating Something He Hasn’t Quite Figured Out What To Call It Yet…but if you hum a few bars….”
Jeff Penczak
Andrei Rikichi – ‘Caged Birds Think Flying Is A Sickness’ (Released on Bearsuit Records 31 August 2022)
