Today's album
Make Up
Flower Travellin’ Band
Flower Travellin’ Band returns from Canada, opens every door in the studio, and somehow turns a 24-minute “Hiroshima” into the sensible option.
02
What Shaped This Album
Flower Travellin’ Band had tried to cross borders early. They played with Western acts, moved to Canada, and recorded there while Japanese rock was still fighting the assumption that it merely copied imports.
Back in Japan, the band planned Make Up as a mixture of concert recordings and studio work. That freedom became its subject. Heavy riffs sit beside acoustic pieces, blues, keyboards, and long improvisation. More members contribute ideas, but expansion does not produce stability. Released in 1973, the double album became their last new record for 35 years.
03
The Album Title,Dissected
Make Up
“Make up” can mean cosmetics, invention, reconciliation, or the parts composing a whole. The album uses nearly all of them. Its packaging resembles a makeup case, while its music assembles a band from several competing versions of itself.
The title also carries a joke. A group praised for sounding raw delivers its most visibly constructed record. Live performances and studio experiments are edited into one object, with the seams left exposed.
04
What to Listen For
The hard entrance
“All the Days” opens with the live band already moving, as if somebody started the tape one punch too late.
The open window
“Look at My Window” trades assault for acoustic space and lets Joe Yamanaka sing instead of detonate.
The broken sample
“Broken Strings” leaves enough strange texture and rhythm to attract a Beyoncé and Jay-Z sample decades later.
The 24-minute decision
“Hiroshima” rebuilds an earlier riff onstage, then keeps going until the concert becomes a controlled emergency.
05
Why It Matters Today
Flower Travellin’ Band did nearly everything rock mythology rewards: crossed borders, took enormous swings, found a frightening singer, and played with no respect for reasonable duration. They still remained peripheral to the standard history told outside Japan.
Make Up explains part of the problem and part of the appeal. It is too inconsistent for easy masterpiece worship and too alive to become trivia. The album lets ambition sprawl, fail, and recover in public. Start with the riffs, stay for the detours, and decide whether twenty-four minutes of “Hiroshima” is excess or the entire point.