Maher Shalal Hash Baz

Maher Shalal Hash Baz operates as a Japanese ensemble under the direction of Tori Kudo, who serves as its primary musician and composer. Kudo crafts and scores deliberately unsophisticated compositions for a shifting collective made up mostly of nonprofessionals, allowing the music to capitalize on spontaneous errors while blending disparate strands of psychedelia, pop, folk, jazz, and experimental music into pieces that retain charm, vision, and delicate beauty amid their imperfections. Details of Kudo’s private background remain scarce, although rumors suggest he practiced visual art prior to assembling the group and had belonged to a radical political movement in Japan before converting to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The ensemble’s title, drawn from Isaiah 8:1-3 and signifying “plunder quickly,” originated after Kudo encountered Hiroo Nakazaki in Tokyo. Nakazaki took the euphonium chair, Kudo handled guitar and keyboards, and Kudo’s wife Reiko supplied vocals, thereby establishing the group’s nucleus even as its wider roster continued to change. The Japanese Org label issued their debut, Maher Goes to Gothic Country, in 1991, followed by the three-LP box set Return Visit to Rock Mass in 1996. Although the band cultivated a devoted audience at home, its international visibility rose sharply once Stephen McRobbie—also known as Stephen Pastel of the Scottish band the Pastels—placed them on his Geographic Records imprint, which in 2003 put out Maher on Water, Blues du Jour, and the anthology From a Summer to Another Summer (An Egypt to Another Egypt). In June 2006 the musicians journeyed to the United States for a concert at the Festival of Experimental Musics in Olympia, Washington; while there they cut the K Records album L’Autre Cap with guest appearances from associates of Tender Forever, Le Ton Mite, and Old Time Relijun. A further K Records release, C’est la Dernière Chanson, followed in 2009.