Justin Heathcliff - Justin Heathcliff (Reissue) (1971/1998)

As the brainchild of former Launchers guitarist Osamu Kitajima, the Justin Heathcliff project was a successful attempt to cop the kind of English post-REVOLVER psychedelia that such London bands as The Syn, Mike Stuart Span and The Flies were recording in 1967-8. As such, the project was highly successful, especially considering it was recorded in London by a former GS guitarist with a fixation for traditional Japanese instruments. It was not, however, Kitajima’s fastidious attention to achieving sonic geographical accuracy that made the finished result a bit special, but the simple fact that love anything English of that periode, even if it’s been faked. The Justin Heathcliff LP is ultimately a cleverly executed but rather pointless exercise in genre re-creating, something that Acid Mother’s Temple attempted with a good deal more humour on their LP of fake ‘Occitanian folk music’ LA NOVIA.

Long before attaining fame as a soundtrack composer and new age artist, Osamu Kitajima adopted a sufficiently Anglo pseudonym and released this amazing homage to British pop-psychedelia in 1971. Issued by Warner Bros. in Japan only, the LP has unsurprisingly climbed skywards in price ever since, and only a cave dweller could miss the faithful nods to Syd, Marc, John, Paul, George and Ringo in the original compositions and English lyrics. Osamu's ability around a studio was evident even then and the choice of genre to lovingly imitate predated the whole retro/'paisley' psych movement by about ten or fifteen years.