Search - Fushitsusha (Keiji Haino) :: Allegorical Misunderstanding

A great, subtle, dark, textural work of art...

Allan MacInnis | Vancouver | 11/01/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Hi. I know we're really not supposed to mention other reviews, but I'm still grinning about the fellow who downloaded this off the internet without knowing what it was and says it's one of the worst CDs he's ever heard in his life. I'm sure from his point of view that's quite a reasonable thing to say. From mine, uh, let me mention that this CD is a project from Haino Keiji, one of the strangest (and most fascinating) improvisers, composers, multiinstrumentalists, and cult figures currently producing in Japan. He's nominally a guitarist, though I've seen him play a concert where he switched from Japanese traditional lutes I couldn't begin to name, to tambourines, to flutes, to electronic tone generators, to hurdy gurdies, and never once brought a guitar out. He also wore dark sunglasses (and pointy goth boots) the whole time he was playing, in this dark little club that seated fully thirty people, who sat in a trance as he performed and didn't applaud -- or cough, sneeze, fart, or move -- til the end of it all, two hours later. He seldom spoke; alone on stage, he would loop something through an electronic relay device, then lay another track over it, loop that, then improvise along with it, on either the same or another instrument. Oh, yeah -- he also burned incense on stage during the first half of the show, to heighten the mood in the little basement we were in. If that sounds interesting to you -- I imagine it wouldn't to that other reviewer -- you should order this CD posthaste. Haino-san sticks to the guitar on this one, as I recall, but makes some beautiful, haunting, dark textures with it, that have the capacity to transform any room it's played in (if people who are listening attentively are in it). He can also get quite passionate at times, but not in any way that there's a formula for... For me, this is easy listening, in the sense that it calms me, awakens my curiosity, stimulates the creative juices, and surrounds me in its smoky, perverse mood... but it clearly isn't for everyone. Haino is a sometimes Zorn associate and currently (summer/fall 2000) has been working with Peter Brotzmann (free jazz saxophonist), by the way. Avoid his Tzadik percussion release, it's just too damn dark to be enjoyable. Get this or his project with Greg Cohen and Joey Baron, if you want something jazzier. Or any other of his releases, which I don't, alas, know a lot about..."