Heretic's second album, released in 1988 with the participation of many guests. Think of it as Kyoto, Japan's answer to King Crimson, Heldon.


At this point, I set up my personal recording studio. Many friends and acquaintances participated for this 2nd release, and we were able to release it on the Belle Antique (Marquee) label.

(1) The analog A side was all one piece, divided into 3 parts.

The basic sounds are all electric guitar sounds. my guitar's delay loop is the basic structure of the piece, combining a digital delay, a chorus unit and an analog delay.

Starting in part 2, I used devices such as a pitch changer, sampling delay, guitar synthesizer, wah-wah, and analogue delay for searching for the possibilities of new guitar sound.
This track also used tape collage, including subliminal processing throughout.

Taiqui Tomiie (Bellaphon and Ain Soph) and Hiroshi Kanai (Rose Band) participated on this track as guests.

(2) Tohru Ohta composed this music, and was created as a original, alternative soundtrack for the US movie, 'Fail Safe' (1964).

As of 2023, I think there is more and more recognition of the nuclear danger from a certain country.

Since those days, we had such a sense of crisis, so if you are interested, please listen to it.

(3) 2 members from Nagoya band, Anonymous played/sung their own music with Heretic arrangements. (Original song title was 'Song of the Bard').

(4) is a session take on tape, composed and played by Yozox Yamamoto (Ain Soph). In fact, due to a miscommunication (my fault), he had been thinking about arranging a different track until the day before, and he came to my studio without sleeps.... (very sorry Yozox!)
It was a Yozox-like arrangement that expressed complex rhythm and very thrilling music.

We can listen to a rare guitar performance influenced Robert Fripp that we can't hear in his group.

Processing such as 'reverse gate reverb' and 'gate reverb' is applied to Robbin's percussion sound to bring it different sound from common progressive rock music.

(5) is played by Takurou Moriyama's younger brother. I changed the playback speed of the tape I recorded, and processed effects on speed down sound. 'Maforoba' is an old Japanese expression that means 'paradise' or 'utopia'.

(6) This track was played by me alone, and I didn't play back tracks such as tapes in advance. MIDI was not available at that time. This meant that I had to work in this fashion:

First, I recorded phrases from the guitar sound into a Korg SDD-1000 delay machine, sampling/loop in specific phrases, and play backing tracks in real time.

If you listen carefully, the loop phrase will gradually change from the middle. With this guitar loop sound in the background, I played solo parts with violin, Roland Guitar Synthesizer (GR-500), and electric guitar.

In the last part, a sequence phrase using an analog synthesizer + analog sequencer (Korg MS-20 + SQ-10) is also played in the background.It's a recording of myself alone and is a live, real-time performance.

(7) This track was recorded when I was experimenting and trying to see if I could capture the sound just before howling.

(8) Do Heretick Session (@Kyoto ZipGunn Studio with Taiqui Tomiie)

The original source was a video, and my first impression was that it was a too long; a boring and redundant performance. For that reason, I thought it would be impossible to release it to the public, but after cutting my guitar solo which I thought was of poor quality, and correcting the sound quality, I thought it was worth having.

Since the original source was monaural, I processed it into a stereo image using special plug-in software. I was able to finish it with a very thrilling performance like Kraut Rock - Heldon - Hawkwind type.

Taiqui's druming is very technical, so there are parts like Bill Bruford circa King Crimson 1974, which made it possible to create a very tense take. Also, the 2-chord guitar backing part is originally from Astral Tempel - 'Shadow Illusion. This part is later replayed in 'Drugging For M'.

Hiro Kawahara