Maher Shalal Hash Baz

MCD. Tori formed Maher Shalal Hash Baz in the mid 80s with neighbours who could not play any instruments, and for the better part of 20 years has been pursuing a single-minded vision of music as simple, spontaneous and unpredictable. The bands always changing lineup of anywhere from three to thirty people features mostly untrained musicians playing music often shown to them on the day of its performance, expressing the innate beauty of failure as much as of success. The band began releasing records in 1989, but did not come to worldwide attention until a decade later, when their marvelously ambitious triple album Return Visit To Rock Mass was released. MSHB were invited to tour outside of Japan for the first time. In 1999, when UK label Geographic released From A Summer To Another Summer, a compilation of Maher recordings. Soon the band were touring the US and Europe regularly, and Geographic released their most recent album Blues Du Jour in 2003. Live Aoiheya January 2003 documents an entire brief performance by this unique band, incidentally the first Maher show that Chapter boss Guy Blackman saw after moving to live in Japan in 2002 (he returned to Melbourne in 2004). It captures the band in a variety of guises unusual even for them, including an extended abstract instrumental, songs based on conversations between band members, passages by Japanese composers, vocal relays and a Brahms Waltz. In the EPs 26 minutes Maher Shalal Hash Baz manage to cover more ground than most bands do in their whole career, all the while maintaining a spirit and idiosyncracy that is idenitifiably their own.