The incandescent portal opened on Japanese soil with the fuzzy marginal abandonment of Les Rallizes Dénudés, and continuously wide open for decades in an electrified diffusion that continues through Speed, Glue & Shinki, Fushitsusha, or High Rise to Mainliner, Acid Mothers Temple, LSD March, or Boris from ‘Akuma No Uta’, persists in living on the edge between psychedelia, noise, speed, and transcendence. Along the way, and forever, it undermines the language of rock beyond borders and postulated in Julian Cope’s hyperbolic but always lived writing in his ‘Japrocksampler’. A kind of incarnation of the spirit of the legendary PSF – acronym for Psychedelic Speed Freaks and name of High Rise’s debut album – it is in this spectrum that we can place Green Milk From The Planet Orange. Formed at the beginning of this century in Tokyo by dead k, A and Benjian – quickly replaced by T and with him giving way to Damo in the most recent incarnation — this guitar/drums/bass power trio traveled the world and left behind a handful of albums on Beta-Lactam Ring with their whirlwind of prog, psych, and punk influences until a hiatus in 2008. Resurrected in 2017 and with a new album—Third, which is actually their fifth—by Inferior Planet in 2019, they continue to propagate music that discards the sterile virtuosity of prog but collects what is interesting about it, making room for improvisation in a progression that throws you into altered states of mind through a cascade of riffs and solos towards infinity—supreme fuzz and delay—repetitive bass lines in the kraut tradition and drum rhythms that both propel and fall into an abyss without a safety net, with a punk-like abandonment and dedication, but fully knowledgeable of the instrument. And its potential for elevation.
BS

Ficus was born in 2022, when Ricardo Santos (bass), Filipe Martins (drums), and Bruno Marcelino (guitar) decided, after playing together in several jam sessions, to create an experimental and psychedelic project with plenty of room for improvisation. Shortly afterwards, they invited flutist Pedro Duarte to join them, and they made their debut concert at Fábrica das Alternativas in Algés in January 2023. They performed at the first edition of the Freak Me Out, Frank festival in Lumiar in 2023 and at the first two editions of the Musaca festival in Estoril in 2023 and 2024. Guitarist Pedro Coelho collaborates regularly with the band. Michel Figueiredo (AKA Zumbi Albino) recently joined on synthesizers and is currently part of the band’s core.