Sarah & Melody - Sound of Pacific (1970) Vinyl

Psychedelic pop masterpiece. OK, let’s cut to the chase. Here you have a bloody rare Japanese psychedelic oddity I have never ever seen offered for sale before since hardly anyone knows about this gem – apart from some heavy Japanese collectors only. And it is quite an oddity that defies categorization. Nope, no point in checking the dreadful Japrocksampler or any of the Pokora books, I doubt you will find any info in there. So what is it all about? Sara and Melody were two young Japanese nymphets that heralded out of the Hawaiian islands – at least that is the story and they cut this one album while crossing the seas towards the motherland around 1968~9. There they were recruited by no one else than the legendary Ishikawa Akira (of Count Buffaloos and Uganda fame) in order to cut this one-off album. Stylistically the album is hard to categorize but in order to try and describe this gem the closest I can come up with is “groovy psychedelic Japanese Minyo cross-breeding with Sergio Mendez kind off Latin vibes and Bossa rock styled moves”. And to top it all off, it was sung in perfect English, making it all the more exotic and off-the hook. In short it is late sixties Japanese psychedelic mondo rock that in decades to come would inspire contemporary groups like the Hair and ilk, plundering the sonics of this disc to death. “Sound of the Pacific” is a real gem of an album that comes housed in a fold out soft paper jacket complete with totally psyched out jacket art which on its turn is housed in a hard case plastic cover. The disc is then pressed on colorful marbled wax, making it visually even more lysergic. It fits the music like a velvet glove. Hideously rare, especially with outer plastic cover intact. Just never surfaces on these shores and comes with the highest possible recommendation if weird but oddly normal genre defying Japanese weird pop psych is your thing. No fuzz or so on this one, but mind bendingly great nevertheless. Bound to never surface again, just mark my words. AWESOME!!! And blooooody rare.