We’ll have to wait a bit longer for Shirushi, the first full album from Montreal’s TEKE::TEKE, but here’s something to occupy fans of their raunchy, hallucinatory revisiting of retro Japanese rock ’n’ roll. The instrumental “Chidori” is a sort of throwback to the band’s earliest stage, an homage to Takeshi Terauchi and “eleki”, the particular Rising Sun surf sound of the ’60s. The deity of that scene, Terauchi was the Dick Dale of the East, and “Chidori” is plucked from his 1972 album Rashomon. It’s a pretty hectic piece of music to begin with, and TEKE::TEKE’s version is that much more intense (it was an impulsive, one-take jam), and slathered in rich, almost miasmic distortion and delay. The radio edit of “Kala Kala”, this digital single’s B-side, is a teaser for Shirushi. It’s more reflective of where the band is at these days. Foregrounded flute and muscular brass, and singer Maya Kuroki’s punk-enka proclamations, sail above a snarling psych-rock melee. If “Chidori” is caustic enough to peel paint off walls, “Kala Kala” might knock them right down.
