Dusted Magazine reviewed Majutsu no Niwa - The Night Before -

With six releases under its belt, Majutsu no Niwa (Magical Garden) is its own band, and no longer needs be thought of as the follow-up to Overhang Party. On The Night Before we’re given plenty of full-on rock, but the band, now a five-piece, offers the broadest range yet and in the process perhaps their strongest album yet as well. They’re not at all afraid of bombast, proven by the latter portion of opener “Tokyo Zero Fighter”, heavy, driving rock blending bits of punk and stoner rock with Hawkwind and strong vocals. The dense fuzz engulfing the wah-guitar lead is thick enough to smoke.

Elsewhere, they rustle up something akin to a psych-rock version of the Buzzcocks or 999, and even toss in a cover of “Search & Destroy” which stands up well. The echoing, spaced-out fuzz guitar and its chiming companion give “Melting Maitreya” a sort of goth-psych groove, as if the Cure teamed up with Helios Creed. Over its nine minutes, though, the song transitions through several personalities, including a mysterious muttered-word passage and a brief chorus with the vocals broadcast as if through a remote megaphone.

“Memories of Fire”, dedicated to Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, is an impressive bit of musical time travel. It is in fact an old-school rocker, strongly reminiscent of Television, though before reading the dedication I found myself thinking more of the Dream Syndicate. Past the halfway point, it diverges from its history lesson, and the two dueling guitars really take off, descending into boiling chug then ascending via skyrocket leads until we’re brought back to earth for the finish.

At the other end of the spectrum is the aptly, if metaphorically, titled “Tropics, Ionized Jungle, Peeping Auroras” which, like the title might lead you to expect, is a quietly introspective piece, an instrumental four minutes of string-like guitar tones and drones. And then there’s the closer, the 21-minute title track. If this is the band’s impression of the night before, then they must be hurting today, because it sounds like a restless opium dream: chiming, deeply-reversed guitar, fuzzed feedback drones, and slow, distant drum hits. It heats up from time to time, but is mostly the opposite of the album’s first, rocking-out, half. Allow it to wash over you in the evening and you’ll fall into its dreamlike atmosphere of cyclical feedback and glacial, pulsing beats. It’s one of those pieces that’s simultaneously beautiful and harrowing, an extended dream that’s occasionally nightmarish, but the heavy feedback fuzz is always controlled and matched by the calm bass heartbeat and sparkling guitar notes.

As if this wasn’t enough, the CD comes with a bonus DVD of live material, over an hour of very well-filmed and edited songs from this and earlier albums, including some of their signature tunes, such as “Frontera” and “La Bruit de la Mer.” Filmed at three different shows during 2014, the band is occasionally sloppy but come across as authentic. These are strong performances that give a good feeling of the band’s forceful live experience.

Mason Jones

Dusted Magazine