Pikacyu-Makoto are an intergalactic love and peace duo, featuring two figureheads of underground Japanese music; PIKA from Afrirampo and Makoto Kawabata of legendary psychedelic avatars Acid Mothers Temple. Galaxilympics is an album of contrasts, so much colour, so much shade! Space Sumo kicks off the record in explosive style. Pikacyu's drums jitter, crash and stumble, but steadfastly refuse to groove. Makoto attacks his guitar, cloaking himself in reverb to produce a wall-of-sound, alternating between melody and noise. Funifunikonefuni follows with its frenzied take on pop music, bubbling with energy and PIKAs multiple vocal layers. Ill Forgive is chant-like in its devotion to following the tumbling melody line of the song even to absurd and unpredictable dimensions. Pika Mako Hall is a more serene affair, with whispered echoes and guitar drones swirling amongst bursts of rapid sequencer ambience. Castle Of Sand picks up on this more spacious approach with slowly developing programmed electronics, before the title track erupts with gurgling synths, soaring guitar trails and PIKAs most searching vocal yet. The album concludes in reflective manner with the suitably titled Sayonownara, a song as much in the present as it is in the act of saying farewell. Its positively elegiac with washes of cymbal and deep acres of guitar drone for the first five minutes before PIKAs drums take things up a gear and into more psychedelic out-rock terrain. This insurgence eventually peaks and the album melts away to silence. Pikacyu-Makoto have made an album that takes you on a trip into your very soul before emerging once more at the edge of another galaxy. Galaxilympics is a triumph of opposites united, it enjoys walking out into the unknown, but its also a portal into the very real world of two musicians who find peace and semblance through their interaction. Hymns and odes to one side, this is a giant album of future-facing song and noise, where better to find harmony enthroned?
