Last year I wrote about the banda shoegaze Lucy’s Drive and I promised to talk soon about another pioneering group of Japanese indie rock, Venus Peter. As a promise is a debt, even if the 'soon' took a while (laughs), here we are.
As with Lucy's, there is not much information in English about this quartet: they were born in 1990, died in 1994, were resurrected in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s and are apparently still active with a different lineup than the original (with Masato Ishida , Shuntaro Okino, Yasushi Donaka and Yutaka Koga, according to Discogs).
I discovered them a long time ago, in the 'golden age' of blogs, and when I listened to “Splendid ocean blue” – one of the tracks from their second album, Spacedriverand the one that jumped in front in random mode – I was shocked; that was 6 minutes of Primal Scream na fase Screamadelicabut coming from the land of the rising sun.
I was embarrassed and left random, I put the guys' debut on the sound and when it started “Yellow shack”, the song that opens LovemarineI noticed that Venus Peter really he was inspired by the Screams, but not only them and not only his melted phase. There was jangle/indie pop like C-86, a lot of the baggy sound of Madchester and a little bit of shoegaze, which on the next album went deeper into distortions.
In addition to being noisier, Spacedriver is more psychedelic, better produced and in it the VP ties together his already mentioned influences/references better (but the Screamadelica and the voice of the Japanese version of Bobby Gillespie is still there hahaha). It's my favorite of everything I've heard from them, and one of the albums I like most from this early 90's vintage, as it catalyzes the indie sound of the time like few others.
Records that justify the name of the blog. Discover, or rediscover.
Lovemarine + Obsession EP
Spacedriver
Source: https://pequenosclassicosperdidos.com.br/2025/01/14/venus-peter-lovemarine-1991-spacedriver-1992/
