Taj Mahal Travellers

Jeff Coleman · 03-01-2009

...A drone, which seems like it has been going on forever, always on the verge of the unbearable. At some point the floodgates open, and there are rushing falls of water and light on all sides. My room reflects in every direction. Grey ghosts on the other side of a black screen reach towards me and fall away. I am in a rock garden following a crystal-clear stream that reflects the light of the sun so brilliantly I can't bear to look at it any longer...

- listening to 'August 1974' for the first (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th...) time.

Wikipedia on the Taj Mahal Travellers:

"The Taj Mahal Travellers (also given variously as Taj Mahal Travelers, Taj-Mahal Travellers, etc.) were a Japanese experimental music ensemble founded in 1969 by former Group Ongaku leader and Fluxus member Takehisa Kosugi. The rest of the group were several years younger than Kosugi, and were all inspired by the spirit of the day. They chose mainly to perform their music out of doors, often on beaches and hilltops, creating spontaneously improvised drones (compare with Dronology), often using standard musical instruments, albeit in unconventional ways (e.g., a bowed double bass placed flat on its back). The group's sound was heavily reliant on electronic processing, particularly delay effects."

From reviews of August 1974 at amazon.com:

"Just as you cannot count the stars in the heavens,one could not place an appropriate number of stars to this album -"

-T. Hardin

"This is where Floyd, Tdream, Ash Ra, etc wanted to go. These guys got there. "

- zphage

'Taj Mahal Travellers on Tour' (a feature length documentary) at UBUWEB: http://www.ubu.com/film/taj.html