not much that needs to be said here; this is peak live 80s stuff from the core trio (jojo, junko & toshiji) doing some shit-hawt wreckage the way only they can. the subtext here is that there are covers here, but where often their versions of the songbook are a reprieve from the mayhem (ie their banger 'silver machine' redux) here they are battered & bruised, basically indistinguishable beyond a few latent tics, reducing hendrix's 'purple haze' to its opening guitar stutter & proceeding to maul it with shrieks & electronic gunk, then taking what is nominally a can cover in 'doko e' & removing all the funk, replacing it with a 16-minute soul wail, genuinely demented & tortured in the most alluring ways. as ever with hijokaidan, they move with total fluidity, absolute glee unleashed in torrents of scorch, unearthing voids of delicious noise & pulling it apart over & over again. the best jam band ever? manic destruction ne'er sounded so fun.

Alchemy, 1987