munehiro narita: psyche de loid

Munehiro Narita, the original "psychedelic speed freak," is for many people the undisputed king of acid-fuzz guitar. Active since the late '70s, Narita is a Japanese psychedelic underground legend. After playing in cult bands like Kyoaku no Intention, he founded the brutal heavy-psych power trio High Rise in the '80s. His furious guitar playing, which involves lethal doses of fuzz-wah at earsplitting volume, can also be heard on his current band Green Flames (featuring Mitsuru Tabata from Acid Mothers Temple). In 2014 Narita released a Japanese-only CD titled Psyche De Loid, doing heavy guitar fuzzed-out covers of classic psych songs from the '60s/'70s. But Psyche De Loid was also the first-ever psychedelic album recorded using Vocaloid technology. Very popular in Japan, Vocaloid is a software/singing synthesizer -- one enters the lyrics of a song into the program and adds music to generate a Vocaloid -- or "Vocal Android" -- which sing in bizarre, mostly female, android-type vocals. Vocaloid is often associated with J-pop but on Psyche De Loid Narita smashes this genre into a wall with the contrast of killer, Ron Asheton-like piercing fuzz-wah guitar and child-like android vocals, featuring surreal covers of tracks by The Stooges, Hendrix, Blue Cheer, Shocking Blue, Pink Floyd, MC5, Jefferson Airplane. . . .