Guitarist/Nuggets box chronicler Lenny Kaye once told me “all psychedelia is regional; indigenous to the area of its birth.” Though the same is said of most music, Kaye argued American psychedelia particularly had definitive borders, organ grinds or fuzz tones particular to city, state and zip code.

Apply the idea to psychedelia worldwide and sounds become area-alive before your eyes. Can and their kraut-rock brethren were frenzied and claustrophobic, inspired by the spare, speed-driven Velvet Underground. Britain's psychedelic classicists Pink Floyd and Soft Machine made heavier versions of the quaintly picayune and picturesque (the muddy, melting Moby Grape) or angularly bluesy sorts (followers of Hendrixian jams). Brazil's tropicalistas Caetano Veloso and Tom Zé took skronk from Zappa's Mothers and the poetry of protest from Dylan.

Japan's psychedelic sorts seem an airier, dreamy lot, borrowing bits of each of those country's qualifiers -- mostly drifty folk and Can-like avant-squalor -- to find a blend of ornate and opaque. It's a mix of the frenetic and the folksy that take hold when Ghost possesses The Khyber this Tuesday (with frequent collaborators Damon & Naomi and the now-wavey Animal Collective).

Across their catalog (mostly on Drag City), Ghost's aesthetic has the painterly feel of monochromatic magic reality; a heightened awareness of the calm, the rests, that gray which inhabits each explosive note, screeching or soft. Ringleader/singer/guitarist Masaki Batoh preaches eerie, spiritualized psychedelia and nature-strewn Dada-ism. From their eponymous 1991 effort through to 1999's dueling druid-eries Snuffbox Immanence and Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet up to last year's duet with touring pals Damon & Naomi, Ghost is the chicken-hypnotizing, mind-expanding sound of being lost in clouded sunstreaks.

From the House of Ghost, amidst the suburbs of Tokyo at the foot of Mt. Fuji, Batoh generously agrees to e-chat with me, a rarity and a treat. At 36, he is quick to dispel many rumors about his free-floating collective. Like the one that says he and his merry men lived in ruins of ancient temples, unused subway stations and communal pastures. "Who lives in such sad places?" asks Batoh. "None of Ghost except me lived in commune, an old house outside of Tokyo. Communal thought seems unsuitable to making music as a band. Does everyone think we're ever-happy hippies?"

Born in Tokyo, grown in Wakayama, Batoh went through Japan's semi-private "cram school" system, finding great hippie teachers who taught "thoughts," not books, on political science, religion, art and philosophies. That was where he made the acquaintance of the first batch of like-minded Ghosts. Their debut is a kraut-rocking blend of rabid percussion, gongs and tinkles, and reed-heavy sounds through which Batoh breathed a mix of gauzy ethereal acoustic guitar and raging slabs of sinewy metal solos.

"Most of [the] members in this early era found fascinating some kind of strange/freak music -- ethnic, medieval, modern, experimental, industrial, psychedelic, acid, folk, German, free and so on.... We had no idea [how] to write songs then. We just played freely." Atop all this, Batoh would add his signature vocals, a mix of dramatic Bowie-like trilling and tuneful whispered mantras.

Though Batoh credits Can, Coltrane, Dylan, The Doors and 13th Floor Elevators as influences, he singles out Moon Dog ("too innocent for his music; no exaggerations or lies, naked without decoration"), Damo Suzuki ("I've never seen such a cute but stubborn guy") and Pearls Before Swine's Tom Rapp. "Rapp is our hero. Much bigger than John Lennon. I can't believe 99.9% of American people don't have his works in their homes. They're treasures. How many years do we need to solve and understand his poetries?" Batoh's love of such liberating music allowed himself and Ghost to travel psychically, "to dream in my mind with music."

By the time we get to 1992 and the epic humming cacophony of Second Time Around, the band had dreamt not only a divine swirling synthesis of psychedelias soft ("First Drop of the Sea"), roaring and crude (the delicious, spare "Forthcoming from the Inside"). It found a musicality to their percussion that seemed choral in its execution and its sound, holy and crazed.

"No one ever pointed that out to me," says Batoh. "I'm pleased, but can't help [but] be humble. Percussions are so important because of their spiritual sounds, evoking our own wildness, the ability to drive us mad or calm." That same bicameral nature is witnessed in Batoh's renderings of a restless society seeking ceremonial rites and prickly passages of life into light, both in Japanese and what he calls "broken language." His lyrics are crucial -- whether it's the divine parable-like chunks of Free Tibet or the almost punkish plain tomes of Ghost -- prayerful, lovely things, naked without metaphor, "dancing to sad tunes we love."

"With Second Time we were a band playing simple compositions in the studio for one month. I wanted to put my visions for the future. As [with] the other Ghost works, I got a feeling Œthis is the last work as Ghost' that time, too. I thought ŒI won't survive anymore.' But you may find small particles of hope in it." Still, he insists his lyrics are but opinions, and issues raised are unimportant. "Each image you get in the music is what's most precious."

Ask him what unites Ghost's works and Batoh is bemused, "can't find a thread between them." Still, little of Ghost's spirits, technologies, hunches, instincts or tonalities have changed since the start. Despite the understated theatrical textures of crackling raw guitars, harpsichord, trumpet, strings, flute and the gentle, mantra-filled folk dexterity that heightens 1999's elegant, heady Snuffbox, he still thinks of Ghost as novices, not a bad thing in his eyes.

"Our spiritual way might be same and skilled up a bit than before. But we still sound like amateurs." But its companion CD, Free Tibet, is a heavier, headier work still, a politicized mess ripped from headlines and heartbeats and based on fear. "I was wondering if we should make a political album for some time. This was my very private desire and not related to Ghost. I was working for Liaison Office of his Holiness the Dalai Lama. The situation in Tibet was very bad; political prisoners tortured and killed without any fair justice. Most advanced nations including Japan disregard the situation."

The result, Free Tibet, was simple folky tunes and freak-out improvisations. But its effect is mighty, giving Batoh much pride. Ultimately, though, if you ask Batoh -- a man whose work is so often prayerful -- if he makes music to God or for gods, to whom his work is lifted toward or what its spiritual inclination may one day be, he seems to dismiss the mightiness of his work -- as if I'd made too much of it all.

"The fact I'm not a good Buddhist does not seem explaining to this. Music is a spiritual thing for human beings. There's fear and delight in it of course -- the holy objects we made in past. But we just express ourselves. Music is born naturally, not manufactured in the studio. It's impossible to divide one's shadow. We were born and dead on every production. We were reborn to make new art and dead after completion. Stop the music and go outside to buy a book of Dalai Lama. Or buy poetry of William Blake. And let's find the truth to live tomorrow in them."

Ghost, Damon & Naomi, Animal Collective featuring Avey Tare and Deaken, Tue., Oct. 8, 9 p.m., $8-$10, The Khyber, 56 S. Second St. 215-238-5888.