Japanese take-no-prisoners avant-proggers
Zletovsko released their eponymous debut album in January 2013 but the band was formed over ten years previously in 2002 by keyboardist Isao Horikoshi and bassist Shigekazu Kuwahara, the latter of whom was a founding member of the Tokyo-based prog outfit
Pochakaite Malko. Kuwahara had also played with
Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida in a
Magma tribute band during the mid-'90s, and Yoshida had tapped him to play bass on 1994's A Hundred Sights of Koenji, the debut disc by his
Magma-esque project
Koenji Hyakkei. Reportedly heavily influenced by '70s prog giants
Emerson, Lake & Palmer and
U.K., the original trio incarnation of
Zletovsko disbanded without recording an album. But as it turned out, the world would hear more from the group, and Sweden's richly multifaceted avant-prog artist
Lars Hollmer might even be seen as one of the catalysts -- both as collaborator and subsequent posthumous inspiration -- for
Zletovsko's later re-emergence.
Around the turn of the millennium,
Hollmer had played Zamla Mammaz Manna tunes in Tokyo with
Pochakaite Malko, and then joined together with other Japanese musicians including drummer Yoshida (who would also join
Hollmer in the 21st century reboot of
Samla Mammas Manna) and guitarist Kei Fushimi for SOLA: Lars Hollmer's Global Home Project, which released an album of
Hollmer favorites the same year that the first version of
Zletovsko was formed. Years later, at a 2009 tribute concert for
Hollmer (who died in 2008), Horikoshi, Kuwahara, Yoshida, and Fushimi put their heads together and, given their shared musical interests and histories, the four agreed to start up a new quartet version of Horikoshi and Kuwahara's previous band.
Zletovsko's eponymous debut disc might have been a long time coming, but it finally arrived on the group's own Zelot label in January 2013. ~ Dave Lynch