Live Wanderus by Tenniscoats

From original press release, 2005:
Tokyo’s Tenniscoats centre around the duo of Saya and Takashi Ueno, a married couple who have been making music since 2000, and together run the highly regarded Japanese label Majikick Records. In that time, Tenniscoats have released three studio recordings, 2001’s Theme Of Tenniscoats, 2002’s The Ending Theme and 2004’s We Are Everyone.

Although each of those records is a fine, fine work, many Tenniscoats fans say that the band’s meditative intensity has never quite been captured in the studio. It is for this reason that Chapter Music is releasing a compilation of their live work. Live Wanderus (named in Saya’s imaginative English to reflect the words Wander, Wonder, Wondrous and Us) presents songs from each Tenniscoats release in distinctive new forms, as well as a number of previously unreleased tracks. It also depicts band in its many shifting lineups, and includes collaborations with members of revered Japanese groups Acid Mothers Temple, Stars and Maher Shalal Hash Baz.

Tenniscoats’s music is a combination of haunting melody and a kind of innocent darkness, with unashamed fragility set against a restrained power that at times can explode into a psychedelic free-for-all.