Just when I thought I knew Far East Family Band through albums like Nipponjin (1975) and Tenkujin (1977), they gave us Parallel World, which is their third album. Like their previous album, Klaus Schulze was given a hand (in the mixing department), only this time around his influence is even stronger. The three guys handling the synthesizers here (Fumio Miyashita, Akira Ito, and Masanori Takahashi aka. Kitaro, the famous New Age star of the 1980s and 1990s) are given an even bigger role here. And don't be scared off by the fact Kitaro is here (since he is often written off as New Age fluff), because this is mega-trippy music that sounds like it was done under the influenced of LSD and/or pot. For this album, they went to Richard Branson's Manor Studios in Oxfordshire in the hopes of getting this album released on Virgin Records. Sadly Virgin rejected it, deeming it too lengthy (which I find a bit hypocritical, after all Virgin didn't have a problem releasing Klaus Schulze's Timewind, and it's almost an hour long). But MuLand, their Japanese label had no problem releasing it.
The album starts off with the short "Metempsychosis", which is basically drummer Shizuo Takasaki's time to shine, with a bunch of electronic effects in the background. Without a doubt the shortest piece on the album. The next piece is "Entering/Times". It starts off with lots of electronic effects that sound like something Schulze would do, before the rest of the band kicks in, with Fumio Miyashita (who also plays guitar), Akira Ito, and Kitaro giving us some great spacy synthesizers. The occasional wordless voice pops up as well.
The next piece is "Kokoro", which is a Pink Floyd-like ballad, sung in Japanese that's more typical of their other albums. But the album's real shining glory is the 30 minute title cut. Divided in to suites, probably to hide the fact it's so lengthy, it consists of a lengthy jam, at first the band gets a bit funky, while you get plastered with lots of spacy synths (Moog, string synths, even the Mellotron rears its head from time to time). I just love the bass work from Akira Fukakusa, as he's playing away, the synthesizers go off the deep-end. You even hear someone yelling "Free Your Mind". Eventually the bass work and drumming ends, leaving the synthesizers to be totally center stage. At this point you hear some references to Zen Buddhism, while you hear lengthy string synth drones, and that Mellotron rearing it's face. I am just utterly blown away by this cut!
It's no doubt that Parallel World is not only the best album Far East Family Band ever done, it's one of the all time great electronic and prog rock albums. This is truly a recommended album to those who enjoy prog and the Schulze-end of electronic music.
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