an unlettered concordance
of the music of keiji haino

solo recordings

index of solo recordings

• introduction to solo recordings
  
  
• watashi dake
• nijiumu
• itsukushimi
• <live> 30 - June - 1992
• execration that accept to acknowledge
• ama no gawa
• guitar works
• beginning and end, interwoven
• a challenge to fate
• tenshi no gijinka
• i said, this is the son of nihilism
• twenty-first century hard-y guide-y man
• suite reverberation: the third heart
• forest of spirits: suite reverberation
• the book of "eternity set aflame"
• saying i love you, i continue to curse myself
• so, black is myself
• keeping on breathing
• sruthi box
• even now, still i think
• abandon all words at a stroke, so that prayer can come spilling out
• mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!
• "c'est parfait" endoctriné tu tombes la tête la première
• hikari yami uchitokeaishi kono hibiki
• koko
• next let's try changing the shape
• black blues (soft version)
• black blues (violent version)
• uchu ni karami tsuite iru waga itami
• kono kehai fujirareteru hajimarini
• reveal'd to none as yet
• yaranai ga dekinai ni natte yuku
• koitsukara usetaitameno hakarigoto
  
  
• closing to solo recordings

introduction to solo recordings
At the time of this writing, there are 33 solo releases by Haino. It is a small fraction of the total number of entries in his discography but, at the same time, 33 is a lot of records. As a group, they do not lack for variety. The instrumentation varies including guitar, hurdy gurdy, percussion, and various electronic instruments. At the same time the style of the music is even more varied than the instrumentation. Haino can make a percussion album that is a haunting soundtrack (nijiumu), a monastic contemplation (tenshi no gijinka), or a free improv exercise (kono kehai fujirareteru hajimarini). The styles of albums displayed by guitars is equally disparate, again ranging from an assaulting wall of sound (execration that accept to acknowledge) to avant garde rock songs itsukushimi. That said, this document gives a hint of the nature of each album, so that if someone has an idea of the kind of Haino they are looking for, then they know which album to pick up.

The albums were recorded from 1973 (ama no gawa) to 2008 koitsukara usetaitameno hakarigoto. In this quarter century, should one expect to find a progression or development in Haino's music? It is hard to believe that in 25 years that a person would not learn something new, grow, develop as an artist and pursue new directions. It seems very unlikely that Haino sprung fully formed onto the scene in 1973. Nevertheless, it is exceedingly difficult to identify any explicable chronological trends in Haino's solo output. The same can be said of another great experimental guitarist, Derek Bailey, who recorded solo guitar records over a period greater than 30 years. There too it is difficult to find obvious manifestations of linear growth. Does it mean there is no growth? No. It only means that in all likelihood one of two things occurred: (1) the growth resulted in a refining of their craftmanship which is not as obvious as getting hit over the head with a two-by-four, since the craft was well-honed to begin with, or (2) the growth is opaque to the author of this document simply because he is too ignorant to see it.

At the top of each listing, the following information is provided: album title, English translation of title where available, format of release, label, catalog number, year of release, country of release, personnel and instrumentation. Finally there is the corresponding entry in the discography of An Unofficial Website of Keiji Haino, which contains detailed information such as track listings and times and which is also maintained by the author of this document.

Agonized, anguished screaming. In the year 1981, when Rick James' Super Freak ruled the air waves, Keiji Haino chose the first track of his first solo album to be an a cappella composition composed of agonized, anguished screaming. A few minutes in he added some high-pitched feedback. It is altogether an appropriate manner for Haino to introduce himself to the world. This first track, with a title that translates as My Whereabouts let that portion of the world who tuned in to such things know where he was coming from, a place that he alone constructed and decorated with a set of sensibilities that are at the same time alien and unmistakably human. The lyrics to the first track give an indication of Haino's perception of his own environment.

In this first track, the barked shrieks and gaps of silence between them are of equal importance. The sparse spacing and measured pacing of the piece is an essential element of the composition. Subsequent tracks introduce the guitar in much more prominent role. Some of the songs have a rhythmic guitar playing and other songs, make no mistake, are certainly arhythmic.

The cd rerelease contains an additional three tracks, the last of which is a 29-minute high-density, distortion-filled electric guitar rant, which is not characteristic of the album as a whole.

My favorite tracks are 1 and 3.

¹Translation provided courtesy of Matthew Pendleton.

This disc is composed of a single 54-minute track, which serves as a soundtrack to a non-existent film, which based on repeatedly listenings, is presumably about a man walking alone down an unlit corridor in the middle of a junk yard, in a makeshift canyon created by stacks of crushed automobiles. Something is following the protagonist, but shows no need of haste in catching up. Rather, it is content to remain just out of sight but too close to forget about. The protagonist, for his part, seems content to let his presence be known, scraping and banging on pieces of metal littering the canyon floor and lining its sides. Periodically, the protagonist meets a stranger in the junkyard canyon. There is momentary conversation between the two, but its meaning is not apparent to either party, who each shrug and pass on without looking back. Is there a linear plot to this film? No, there is not. Is there a thrilling climax, a satisfying resolution and a calming denouement? It depends upon one's point of view. The protagonist scales the canyon side and reaches the peak of the mountain of metal garbage. From this vantage point, he calmly announces what he has learned during the entire journey through the junkyard. At the bottom of the canyon, the creature who has pursued him all this way, howls and claws at the wreckage, too cumbersome to scale it. Whatever secret knowledge the protagonist is attempting to share is lost; the creature is utterly deaf to the message.

The principle instrumentation of this recording is percussion complemented by voice. There are other unidentified instruments that make momentary appearances, but the banging and scraping appears consistently through-out the recording. The soundtrack is much more violent than the film itself, which is devoid of battle and bloodshed. The violence originates from the frustration with not being able to communicate.

To my knowledge, this is the only recorded or live performance of Nijiumu with Haino as the solo performer. All subsequent references to Nijiumu refer to an ensemble, of which Haino is but a member.

This album features what can probably be called the most typical style of Haino solo live performance. Once must use the word typical in a qualified way when Haino has admitted to playing 80 instruments, and the resulting live shows are correspondingly varied. Nevertheless, here we have Haino on guitar and voice playing songs in an avant garde rock vein. Yes, some of us may despise the term avant garde as having been hijacked by somewhat pretentious high-art, but, realistically, there is a reason these songs never hit the pop chart and it's not due to poor execution. Rather, it's simply Haino's vision has not been filtered through a commercial lens. Anyway, some of the songs that appear hear in the early 1990's continue to appear in Haino solo live shows for the next two decades. Some of the songs have tender vocals and gentle guitar playing and some of them are more abrasive, but the whole of the album is decidedly musical (meaning that there is clear and sustained melody in the songs.) In all likelihood, this 58-minute single track is a fraction of the entire show, since many of the Haino solo guitar and voice shows in Tokyo last more than two hours. Nevertheless, it is sufficient to allow this album to provide a good understanding of classic Haino songmanship.

The only thing that keeps this tape from being labeled a bootleg recording is that it was sold from the merchandise table at a Haino concert in Germany in 1992. This cassette was released in a numbered edition of 50. The cover pictured here is number 10 of 50. Based on the author's listening to the tape, this appears to be more of the same concert from which the track The man who wring under the name of gratification that appeared on the Charnel House Compilation, Land of the Rising Noise (CHCD 9, 1993), was taken. This show was originally performed at Bordigarrie, Frankfurt.

On side A (16 minutes), we have The man who wring under the name of gratification with a few minutes of extra material at the beginning. The guitar is very low in the mix and takes a back seat to some impassioned vocals. I don't know why a man would wring under the name of gratification, but Haino makes it clear that if there is wringing to be done, let it be done with vigor, with vehemence, with anguish where appropriate. About 10 minutes in, Haino switches to ukelele near as I can tell. (Yeah, I know it probably isn't a ukelele, but in terms of describing the sound, if the shoes fits... Besides, there's no shame in the ukelele; even the great Derek Bailey took a stab on the ukelele (Derek Bailey & Christine Jeffrey, Views From 6 Windows, Metalanguage, 114, 1981, lp, side 1, track 4).)

Side B contains a single 27-minute track of guitar solo, loud, noisy, heavily processed halfway in, ending with a few minutes of shouting. It's how I also like to end my days at work.

There are times when Haino's guitar genuinely evokes memories of watching the original Godzilla movies on TV after school in the 1970's, simply because the guitar sounds like a roar from Godzilla. Whether one appreciates this comparison or not, it is nevertheless true and a perfect example occurs at the very beginning of this album. In all fairness, describing this album as a "wall of sound" is not very accurate. The image of a wall conjures up the idea of uniformity, that there is a sustained and homogeneous roar. A performance of Borbetomagus, in which there is an uninterupted squeal of indefinite duration is perhaps a much better example of a wall of sound (with barbwire strung at the top). Such is not the case here; Haino's guitar is loud and abrasive, but it is dynamic. The ear is not met with a monochromatic drone, but rather a bombardment of guitar playing that is heavy on distortion and feedback, containing some regular rhythm but free of melody. The vocals are at times consistent in style with the guitar playing and at other times softer, creating a trademark Haino contrast between gentle, plaintive vocals laid over harsh guitar. Another characteristic feature of many of Haino's more dissonant albums is that there is a short section of melody at the end of performance, serving, one presumes, as a sort of reward for having made it through the assault to the end, but this ending is absent on Execration. Of course, this is only my interpretation.

Opinions on this sort of performance vary as much as do people's sensibilities. The openness of the listener to this kind of music determines everything about the response of the listener to the music. If the listener is not open, then they gain nothing from the performance and the general comment is, "This was most self-indulgent performance I have ever witnessed." On the other hand, if the listener is open to the idea that music can be dissonant and abrasive, then there is plenty of texture and nuance to the playing that can reward the careful listener. In all truth, the playing becomes less dissonant with each subsequent listen. Whether it is because one grows callouses over their ears or one actually is hearing more of the music is probably based upon the individual disposition of the listener.

Finally, let's address the important point of the manliness of discordant music. It certainly seems that men are more interested in creating and listening to harsh music than women. During the fifteen years that the author has interacted with Haino fans around the world, I would estimate that 95% of them are male. (A couple prominent exceptions come to mind.) Given that the world is 50% women, one may naturally wonder why so few women are represented here. Do you expect to find the answer here? Dream on! However riddled with pointless digressions you may find this document to be, even it has some limitations, and an examination of gender-bias in experimental music is well outside them.

This live album from 1973 was released 20 years after it was recorded. In the 1990's Haino experienced a surge in worldwide popularity. Of course, this popularity was strictly among listeners of experimental music and was, as such, a relative popularity, but nevertheless he began to be heard by a worldwide audience. Perhaps his popularity peaked at about 1997 or 1998 when a major label, Tokuma Japan Communications released 8 Haino records in a two-year span. Prior to that, in the 1990's there was an increasing demand to hear Haino's music, which resulted in the release of archival recordings that otherwise would never have seen the light of day. This is such a release.

This 48-minute single track release is filled with a relatively constant background of electronic hum and distortion. The liner notes emphasize that there are no tapes or overdubbing. Presumably, Haino rotated the dial on the amp to "static hiss" and moved to another instrument, for laid over the ambient background are a variety of sounds emanating from unknown instruments. The liner notes do not indicate what instruments were played and the suggestion of a guitar by the author of this document above is at best a guess based on the fact that Haino can coax a lot of different sounds out of a guitar. In fact, sometimes the instrument in the forefront sounds more like an electronically processed kazoo than anything else.

Let’s formulate the review of Guitar Works as a comparison with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Of the latter, Bach first gave the title to a book of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, dated 1722, composed "for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study." Can the same be said of Guitar Works? Of course! Guitar Works exists solely for the profit and use of today’s musical youth desirous of learning how to play the guitar like a Japanese free-improv master. The styles represented in the eight tracks, each about a minute long, provide the musical youth with a broad repertoire from which to draw.

Let us further explore the analogy between Guitar Works and the Well-Tempered Clavier. The inimitable font of knowledge, Wikipedia, states, “The Well-Tempered Clavier is generally regarded as one of the most influential works in the history of Western classical music.” Can the same be said of Guitar Works? Well, I refuse to answer this stupid question and I invoke a pox on whoever first emails me providing their own answer to it.

This seven inch record was part of the Table of the Elements Guitar Solo Seven Inch Series all released in 1993. The first six releases had white jackets and white vinyl. The second six releases had black jackets and black vinyl. A rumored third set of six releases never appeared. The series as a whole was outstanding and included

• Keith Rowe -- City Music for electric guitar (5 Boron, 7")
• Davey Williams -- Firing up the old Sikorsky/Requiem for Bosnia (6 Carbon, 7")
• Jim O'Rourke -- Muni/Michel Piccoli (7 Nitrogen, 7")
• Hans Reichel -- Variations on Jay (8 Oxygen, 7")
• Kazuyuki K. Null -- Cryonics/Winter Solstice/Memes (9 Fluorine, 7")
• Henry Kaiser -- Delerium/Homesickness (10 Neon, 7")
• Derek Bailey -- New years messages 1-4 (11 Sodium, 7")
• Keiji Haino -- Guitar works I-VIII (12 Magnesium, 7")
• Paul Panhuysen -- The galvanos (13 Aluminum, 7")
• Lee Ranaldo -- Smoke ring #5/Travis 4,5 (14 Silicon, 7")
• Loren Mazzacane -- Five points (15 Phosphorus, 7")
• Thurston Moore -- Starfield Wild/Earth/Amp (16 Sulfur, 7")

This album features Haino on guitar, playing what are very much composed songs, most of which clock in at four to six minutes. The guitar provides a rhythm if not a melody. In only one of the tracks, As it is now, does the guitar actually create a sustained drone, and even that is pretty mellow. By Haino standards, this is almost an album of pop songs, easy to listen to, instantly accessible. Of course by any normal standards, it's still harsh and dissonant and about as close to a pop album as Chernobyl is to a campfire.

English translations of the lyrics are provided. They form sparse fragmentary poems, in which what is unsaid is just as important as what is said, reflecting the same aesthetic considerations that make the silences and gaps in Haino's music as important as the sound between them. For example, in the song, In Between, we have the lyrics:

What does it mean? Should we look for meaning? To that I refer you to another poem, titled Poem by the American poet Donald Justice,

A Challenge to Fate feels a little bit like a sampler. Track one features a cappella shrieking. Tracks two and three are dreamy little songs with soft vocals. Track four is a blast of distorted guitar. As the album continues, the pattern is repeated until it ends at track eleven, Affection, which is a percussion and voice, a hint of the next album to come. In terms of showcasing Haino's breadth, his equal regard for the soothing and the abrasive, the melodious and the dissonant, this album performs very well. However, some albums have a synergy between tracks, which makes listening to the album as a whole greater than the sum of the individual parts. This is particularly true of Haino albums in which lengthy tracks can induce a mental state in the listeners that persists through the course of the album. Such a synergy is not possible on an album that serves as a sampler. One wonders if, in releasing this, his first album on French label, he assumed that this may be the only album by which the French audience in general would know him. Therefore, he tried to put too much into a single record. Who knows? Certainly, this trend is not apparent on albums released on international labels later in his career. Regardless, taken on their own merits, there are some beautiful tracks on this record, especially track 3, My Only Friend.

The world was not ready for Tenshi No Gijinka, Haino's first release on John Zorn's American label Tzadik. Haino's international reputation was built on a raw guitar roar, and this album has no guitar, and is for the most part, a highly polished studio effort. I recall this album earning Haino the title of "wank" in 1995.

Tenshi No Gijinka is a percussion and voice studio album. There are multiple layers of vocals superimposed over, what I believe is a single percussion track. The featured track, track 2, is an eleven and a half minute composition featuring cymbals, one layer of low frequency monastic chanting, and one layer of high frequency vocalizing by Haino. It's a beautifully textured piece of music. Other tracks feature chimes or drums or gongs. I think there is an additional ethnic stringed instrument played over cymbals on track 6. The instrumentation on track 7 is not easy to identify, but isn't percussion. Again, as on Ama No Gawa the mind conjures up a distorted kazoo. The final track is layered vocals, no screaming, whispering and chanting, hypnotic and pleasant and just a little frightening.

There is a visual element to Haino's percussion performances, absent in this audio recording, but present in either live performances or in the Solo Percussion Video released by PSF on 2002 (on VHS only).

This single track album is similar to Itsukushimi, discussed above. It is an hour-long single track of Haino playing guitar and singing some trademark songs. As Haino goes, it's completely excellent. Haino displays his penchant for contrasts shifting from blasts of guitar to slow paced strumming and back. This crappy description does no justice whatsoever to how good this album really is. In the forty-second minute, Haino launches into a contagious anthemic song that, so far as I know, is available nowhere else.

High density, polyphonic drone. That's what everybody thinks of when they think of the hurdy gurdy, that is, if they have heard Haino playing it. This was Haino's first hurdy gurdy release. No one is actually sure what the title is supposed to mean. Some call it a pun, but if it were a pun, it would have some punnish meaning. At it is, hard-y guide-y doesn't make any sense at all. Regardless, to suppose that this is a novelty album, Haino tinkering with a hurdy gurdy, would be completely wrong. This was the beginning of a long-lasting love affair between Haino and the instrument.

There are three elements in a Haino hurdy gurdy album. The first and ubiquitous element is the drone. It's a heavily textured, organic drone, to be contrasted to a clean sine wave that could be generated electronically. The polyphonic nature of the drone is generated by the fact that the wheel, turned by a crank, is in contact with multiple strings. When I saw Haino play the hurdy gurdy live, it appeared that he had small pieces of aluminum foil crumpled around the strings at different points, to give a metallic sound to the instrument. The second element of the Haino hurdy gurdy performance is the screeching string, as I will call it here. While all the other strings are participating in the drone, one of them is singled out to make music over the drone. In Haino's hands, it screeches or shrieks. It's more musical in the sense that it varies in tone like a song might and not so much in the sense of providing any melody. Finally, the third element of the Haino hurdy gurdy performance is voice. From time to time, Haino sings over hurdy gurdy. The combination of these three effects is an utterly alien music and uniquely Haino creation.

At the time of this writing, there are four more solo discs of hurdy gurdy, as well as numerous appearances of the hurdy gurdy in other ensembles and compilations. As the first appearance of the hurdy gurdy, this release stands out for its raw and unapologetic initiation of the instrument into the world of experimental music.

It appears that “Purple Trap” is the name given to the label when Haino chooses to self-release something. The four cd box set, Soul’s True Love, was the first release on Purple Trap. This is the second disc of the box, as judged by the catalog numbering. The disc is titled Suite Reverberation and subtitled The Third Heart. The content of the entire box set is early recordings. How early? Only the Lost Aaraaff disc has a definitive date of 1971. The other discs are undated, but presumably of similar vintage.

The sound quality is reasonably good quality given the era and the fact that it sat around for 24 years before being released. Still, the atmosphere of this album conjures up thoughts of the first Sebadoh album, The Freed Man—somebody sitting in their bedroom with a tape recorder and some musical instruments lying around. Only where Sebadoh sings about how “True Hardcore” is hard to find, Haino is making small sounds and neo-primitive children’s music on a circa 1970s electric organ. There is some mumbling into a harmonica, something that would generally be acknowledged as violin abuse, a little bit of minimalist tone generation, some flute (widely considered to be the instrument of Haino’s least proficiency among the 80 or so instruments he claims to play—especially widely by me), and half a dozen other instruments. The sound is sparse. It is, without a doubt, art house fare.

There is a reason this music wasn’t released when it was recorded; it has very little to recommend it except as a reference and a window into his “early developmental years”, by which later releases, much more highly polished and artistically developed can be measured. There is also a reason it was released in 1995. In 1995, Haino was king of the Japanese experimental world. His audience was expanding across the globe. The throngs could not get enough of him, and he satiated this appetite with releases of old material. Have the throngs had enough today? Of course not, you imbecile! You can never have too much suite reverberation! Shame on you for suggesting otherwise.

This is the third disc of the Soul’s True Love box set. The disc is titled Forest of Spirits and subtitled Suite Reverberation. The date of recording of this disc is unknown but presumably is from the early 1970’s. As was the case with the disc Suite Reverberation reviewed above, the sound quality falls between lo-fi and ok-fi. The disc is split into four movements, each titled about reverberations. For example, the fourth movement is titled, The reverberation that attempts to take back all energy into itself. This really speaks to me because when I was a kid I had a reverberation that attempted to do just that. I was always telling it that it was impossible for anything to take back all energy into itself, much less a puny little reverberation like it was, no matter how sweet, but it didn’t listen to me. It took as much energy as it could into itself and then it ran off with a poodle named Milkshake Winkie, leaving me to cry into my pillow at night. You would think that with this kind of association, I might not be open to the idea of a whole album dedicated to reverberations of this kind and of other kinds as well. But you would be wrong. If I learned one thing from that whole sad experience, it is that you can never underestimate the power of reverberation. Why just the other day, I was reverberating in the shower and it hit me like a bolt of lightning right between the eyes, “Maybe you can take back all energy into yourself!”

When one assembles a Forest of Spirits, who have a natural fondness for as well as talent for reverberation, the results are not to be underestimated. In the first track, there is a mental state within this music similar to the mental state when one wakes up early in the spring or summer, goes outside on the porch while it is still dark, and listens to the thousands of birds singing their predawn rituals. Each species—the house finch, the grackle, the cardinal, the robin, the blue jay, the morning dove, the occasional owl—has their own song, which it contributes to the orchestra. Within each section, each individual provides its own unique timing and interpretation of the music. Frequently, there is rain, which provides an inanimate backdrop to the organic song. There is a similarity between the music on this disc and such an avian orchestra. There is a lo-fi background hiss (the rain). There are several instrumental singers who while not competing with each other, are not necessarily working in concert.

Subsequent tracks focus on individual performers, singled out from the crowd. They perform their songs with the same certainty of ownership that birds have of their own songs. Of course, only birds understand the songs of other birds (perhaps) but people still enjoy hearing them. The same can be said of this disc, except for the last track, which is a 26-minute undistinguished static roar and which is difficult to stomach without some other context.

Three tracks of ultra high-density guitar. Brutal, monumental, etc. A behemoth lumbers slowly through a forest of ambient distortion. This is, as they say, a sound sculpture. Speed and agility are not valued commodities in a work such as this. What is required is ponderous mass and unswerving adherence to method. In this case the method is a roar. That’s track one. If it doesn’t sound entirely complimentary, that’s because I don’t value brutality and monumentalism (made that word up probably) like I used to. Track two: contemplation for tone generator and screeching. This is a twelve minute piece of fluctuating electronic drone and shrieking. There isn’t much more that can be said on this point. The last track has a thirty minute guitar roar in the vein of track one, followed by six minutes of electronic hum then a short, soft three minute song in Haino’s “angelic voice” mode. I suppose this is the reward for having survived the first 65 minutes of the performance. Is the reward worth the wait? Once. After that, I extracted the last three-minute section from the track and was satisfied to listen to just that from then on.

The first 43-minute guitar track is similar in vein to The Book of Eternity Set Aflame, but here intended for a British rather than American audience. Dissonant doesn’t begin to describe this. The real treat is the second track-a piece for rudra vina and voice. The rudra vina is a stringed instrument used in Indian classical music. It has long weird resonances that follow after each string is plucked. The first appearance of the rudra vina precedes this release by a year, when it appeared as a track on the Tokyo Flashback Volume 4 compilation in 1995. In contrast to that track, here Haino has become familiar with the instrument and plays it with a confident command. What follows is an 18-minute exceptionally beautiful Haino song featuring voice and rudra vina. I rank this song up in my top ten.

This is a 67-minute single track of tone generator, with a little bit of voice here and there. What is a tone generator? It is a device (either electronic or electronically amplified in this case) that generates a steady tone. Turning of dials or manipulation of some other control allows one to control the volume, frequency and pitch and perhaps waveform of the tone. Instantly, we understand this music will be of a minimalist nature. Who can make minimalist recordings? Anyone can because it does not require conventional musical talent. However, few do because it is unlikely that in the general case the end product will satisfy one of the reasons for making music, namely having an audience listen to it. Who listens to minimalist recordings? If you said “art wanks”, shame on you. Why would anyone listen to minimalist recordings? An analogy with the visual arts might better prepare one to answer this question. When one goes to modern art galleries, there are a collection of abstract artists that invariably appear in the collection—Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, etc. There are serious discussions of the basis of merit of such art and I do not attempt to repeat them here. What I would say is that it is the artistic milieu in which the work was done that brings some importance to it. Thus, to repeat the experiment of Jackson Pollock today is not a meritorious artistic activity. Thus, we turn to a 67-minute tone generator drone. Is there some context by which this otherwise featureless track can be redeemed? Fortunately, the answer is yes. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the answer is. Thus, its redemption is beyond my reach. Forty-odd minutes into the track, Haino plays a very loosely strung vina and chants for seven or eight minutes. There is something very interesting happening here with the interplay of drone, vina and voice, but after forty odd minutes of drone, I am in no mood to appreciate it. About 51 minutes into the track, Haino provides some gentle, high-frequency vocals. One can understand that the tone generator represents a darkness, an opacity, an impenetrability surrounding a core in which an alien organism exists and perhaps thrives. If the opacity, however, is so great that it obscures all knowledge of the central message, then what is the point in attempting to communicate the message at all? A difficult album, to be sure, and one which will infallibly unveil listeners with insufficient patience, such as myself, to my own chagrin.

In 1997, Haino had a new opportunity to present his music to a broader Japanese audience through a deal with the Japanese major label , Tokuma Japan Communications. Ultimately 8 discs were released, the first four on April 21, 1997 and the second four on June 24, 1998. It is interesting to see what Haino chose to showcase at this level. The first two releases of the first batch were Fushitsusha albums, not surprising since Fushitsusha was the ensemble that always received the most public interest and recognition. The third release was this solo album, Keeping on Breathing. The last release was a free improvisational duet with Derek Bailey, widely regarded as the grandfather of European Free Improvisation. These four discs distilled Haino’s activity as a band member, soloist and improviser into a few discs. The collective product is exceptional. This solo album is no exception. Haino takes a selection of songs that illustrate the breadth of his repertoire and performs them on guitar and voice. Although Keeping on Breathing features purely Haino rock-based guitar and singing, it is doubtful that this album successfully served to open new ears for Haino. The first two tracks are ten-minutes long each, the first with a dense roar and the second with blistering guitar. There is just a little bit of agonized a capella shrieking of Watashi-dake. There are still dense wall-of-sound guitar roars of Ama No Gawa, but not sustained for as long. The stand-out track, Here, is still 18 minutes long. I have never heard any one refer to this album as Haino’s major-label sell-out because there is no compromising on his part and it simply doesn’t fit the mold. The only thing that keeps the track Here from being a personal favorite is that it is eclipsed by the 31-minute version on the PSF release, titled Koko (Here).

Tokuma did a special promotion in conjunction with the Japanese record store chain Disk Union, whereby anyone who bought all four of the Haino-related Tokuma titles released April, 1997 (Keeping on Breathing - Haino, A Death Never to Be Complete - Fushitsusha, The Time is Nigh - Fushitsusha, Drawing Closer, Attuning: The Respective Signs of Order and Chaos - Derek Bailey and Keiji Haino) at the same time at Disk Union (or at Modern Music) would receive a limited edition three inch CD of extra material - Haino singing over "sruthi box" accompaniment.

What is a sruthi box? It clearly is a tone generator and it could be the same tone generator that so confounds us in So, Black is Myself. The oracle of all knowledge human and divine, wikipedia, tells us that the common spelling is actually a sruti box or shruti box and that, “A shruti box is a small wooden instrument that traditionally works on a system of bellows. It is similar to a harmonium and is used to provide a drone in a practice session or concert of Indian classical music. It is used as an accompaniment to other instruments and notably the flute. Use of the shruti box has widened with the cross-cultural influences of world music and new age music to provide a drone for many other instruments as well as vocalists.” There you have it. You can see a picture of, listen to and even buy your very own shruti box here. (Advertisement provided free of charge. And I don’t own stock in this company--yet.)

In this 18-minute track, the drone gradually builds, until at 8 minutes Haino sings in his “angelic voice” mode, i.e. high frequency, drawn-out notes. This cd works for me more easily than So, Black is Myself probably because it is shorter, and the variations in the drone are less gradual.

Even Now Still I Think? What does that mean? My guess is that Haino is responding to those who thought that the first Haino hurdy gurdy album was a gimmick. He replies, “No, on the contrary, even now I still think that there is great potential in my interaction with the hurdy gurdy, enough for a second full album.” So there is. He apparently was not the only one who thought so because he got a major label to release an album called The Twenty-First Century Hard-y Guide-y Man: Even Now Still I Think featuring experimental music. Although it has already happened, it is scarcely possible to imagine how such a thing came to pass. Regardless, there is no gimmick in this music. This is a 72-minute symphony that begins with about a 26 minute instrumental drone and then merges into a version of the song that appears in 17-minute form on the halana compilation. (I don’t know for a fact that it is the same song, but it sounds similar to me.) This song lasts about 14 minutes and then is followed by a second twenty-minute instrumental drone. It concludes with a whispered song. That I prefer the 17-minute version of the song to the 72-minute version is again only an indication of my aforementioned lack of patience. As is noted in the review of the hurdy gurdy piece on the halana compilation, there is a difference between this album and the first album. The first album was more raw and the second album displays a more sympathetic relationship between Haino and the instrument, and is capable of eliciting from it some gentle tones that compliment the gentle singing, which was not present on the first album. Whether anyone else in the world agrees with this comparison is unknown, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this were the case. Although, I have reached this idea, after numerous submersions in the two discs, I still don’t have any certainty that my opinion might not be completely different after additional listenings.

nb: In reality, the title, Even Now Still I Think is taken from the lyrics of the Fushitsusha album, Hisou, which also provided album titles for a couple other Haino releases. The lyrics are here.

The first disc of this two cd set is a 48-minute hurdy gurdy and voice piece. In the three years that had elapsed since Even Now Still I Think, Haino's use of the instrument has continued to mature. In the review of the first Twenty-First Century Hard-y Guide-y Man, it was noted that in Haino's early playing of the instrument, there were three elements of his hurdy gurdy pieces: the hurdy gurdy drone, the hurdy gurdy screeching string and voice. By the second album, the screeching string had become a gentler music. By this third album, even the drone is singing. All of three of the elements are in a kind of harmony that did not exist in the earlier hurdy gurdy records. The only disappointing thing about this release is that there is some overload in the volume levels of both the hurdy gurdy and voice near the end of the piece, at least on my audio system.

The second disc of this two cd set is a 44-minute piece for wave drum and voice. A wave drum is an electronic drum that "interprets" whatever strikes it. The interpretation is done through a computer chip, which presumably has been preprogrammed to produce a range of percussive sounds. Whether the device has the capability to produce additional user-supplied sounds, I don't know. This is Haino's first excursion with a wave drum and what we get from Haino is a sampler of sounds from the device. None of the fragments are musical. There is no resemblance between the chaos on this album and Haino's earlier "acoustic" percussion album, Tenshi No Gijinka. A variety of the tracks here contain "space age" sound effects (like rubber bands and gongs) that makes one think of listening to a Carl Stalling album of cues for Loony Tunes, except in Stalling's case the cues were worked into a musical score and in Haino's case they are scattered around someone tinkering with a new toy. In Haino's case, the cartoons would be totally demented. The main characters of these cartoons are all abstractions. There is Execration that Accept to Acknowledge, a black smear that stains anyone who comes close to it (like an infectious Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip), The Man Who Wring Under the Name of Gratification, who is almost too sad to look at, an ominous dark gray mass called Fushitsusha, the Twenty-First Century Hard-y Guide-y Man, a crippled elderly invalid who has wandered away from his nursing home confinement, and of course Suite Reverberation, cute and cuddly as a puppy. These cartoons are characterized by an almost autistic violence in which the action is separated from meaning by a lack of communication between different characters in the show. When I first started watching these cartoons, I was amazed at how much emotional sway something could have that was, on the surface, bereft of all comprehensible meaning. That episode when the Twenty-First Century Hard-y Guide-y Man fled like hopscotch from Fushitusha, to be saved at the last minute from utter desolation by the unlikely hero, Suite Reverbation, captures the essence of the show. That the skit concluded with the abrupt transformation of Suite Reverberation into a planet eating monstrosity in the vein of Unicron no longer surprised me. It was exactly what I had come to expect.

With all of the Haino solo guitar albums, there are bound to be similarities between some of them. Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!, however had no precedent or like-minded neighbor. It is at the same time contemplative and possessing of a lightness and agility. The guitar is quiet; there is no distortion, feedback, or reverb. Sometimes Haino's playing is almost harp-like. The voice too is in keeping with the guitar. It's harder to describe this disc than other discs because not only is there no other Haino disc to which it can be compared, but also there isn't a genre of music within which it can be easily placed and referenced. In the 1970's and 80's, Han Reichel released a series of lps on the German label, FMP. While Reichel does not sing and focused on playing guitars he had structurally modified or built, the music that was generated on albums such as The Death of the rare bird Ymir (FMP, 0640, 1979, lp), bears some stylistic similarities to this album of Haino's. Both albums feature beautiful, nonidiomatic but melodic guitar playing. Both albums promote an optimistic and light-hearted atmosphere--Reichel more so than Haino, but this album of Haino's more so than any other. In short, both albums are guaranteed to make your day better. Run--don't walk--to your nearest purveyor of German and Japanese music (that would most likely be the internet) and order one of each.

The extended title of this release is

This is a 45-minute live performance from Star's Pine, Tokyo on March 31, 2002. The next question one asks is what is the a rhythm machine? One wonders at times whether the same instrument is credited in various ways due to varying translations. Sometimes Haino plays digital theremin and sometimes air synth, which presumably are the same thing. Sometimes Haino plays tone generator and sometimes sruthi box, which in some (but not all) cases may be the same thing. In 2001, the second disc of Abandon all words at a stroke, so that prayer can come spilling out contains a performance on wave drum. Is the rhythm machine of this release two years later the same instrument as a wave drum? My guess is that it is, although the performance here is very different than the release on Alien8.

This performance has Haino heavily utilizing sampling of his own voice, as there is multiple layers of Haino's voice in the live performance. There even is what appears to be a hiccup or two with the voice sampler, where, for example, a little more than six and a half minutes into the track, there are some Haino vocals that last about fifteen seconds before being truncated abruptly in mid syllable. Regardless, the layered vocals play a leading role in this performance; they are featured loudly in the mix and the percussion provides a backing role for the vocals. The vocals are at times a kind of chanting and at other times screaming and roaring, with a little rapping thrown in for good measure. I think at this point we understand two things about Haino. First, Haino is an experimentalist. He will continue to make new and different kinds of records. Second, Haino is captain of his own ship; he does what he wants to. Not all experiments are successes. If it was guaranteed to succeed it would not be an experiment. In the world of music, the success of an experiment depends heavily on the listener. This cd represents a new experiment for Haino. Will it be as warmly embraced by the hordes as was, say, Itsukushimi? Probably not. However, it is an essential characteristic for Haino to continue to experiment. Thus we have this album of layered voice and rhythm machine, rather than Itsukushimi redux. It's alright. Tell your kids, "It's alright."

The solo ablum, Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!, showed Haino working in solo form moving from his previously established method of guitar and vocal-based songs, toward a more improvisational approach, though still maintaining a song-structure and keeping both guitar and vocal. This album, Hikari yami uchitokeaishi kono hibiki completes the journey, abandoning the song structure as well as the vocals. This is a true blue non-idiomatic improvisational solo acoustic guitar record. Where Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!! (at least the first two thirds) has a modest kindred esthetic to the solo guitar records of Hans Reichel, Hikari yami uchitokeaishi kono hibiki draws very strongly on the esthetic of Derek Bailey's solo guitar records. To me, this is Haino's interpretation of Derek Bailey's paradigm of non-idiomatic improvisation.

A little more than three years ago, I wrote the following of Hikari yami uchitokeaishi kono hibiki

Today I find these comments to be no less true than when they were written. Such an influence is not unlikely since Haino and Bailey had already released two collaborative albums several years earlier, Drawing close, attuning --the respective signs of order and chaos (1997) and Songs (2000).

This was a promotional disc only available from PSF between December 24, 2003 and January 31, 2004 as part of their Keiji Haino fair. It was produced in a limited edition of 300. Two or three other PSF discs had to be purchased to get this one free. It was released at the same time as Hikari yami uchitokeaishi kono hibiki.

Based upon my ear alone, I believe that this song is the last of five songs played at a solo concert by Keiji Haino on September 21, 2003 at Jerry Jeff in Nishi-Waseda, Tokyo. This song which has appeared previously, including on the solo album, Keeping on Breathing. On this release, we have a full 31-minute version of the song. All five of the songs played in this concert are spectacular. It just makes you realize that, despite Haino's prodigious output of official releases, how much incredible music goes unreleased.

The first 19 minutes or so is a beautiful instrumental introduction to the song with a little bit of vocalizing. The song itself is a gentle five or six minutes. The last six minutes is a guitar solo that almost becomes a bit noisy, but, by and large, is a sweet ending to the entire affair. This recording is an incredible live performance of one of Haino's best songs. This version of Koko ranks in my top ten Haino tracks.

In 2002, Haino released Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!, which translates as First, Let's Remove the Color. The final track on this album is titled, What shall we remove next?. The answer of course is shape. In this release, Next, Let's Try Changing the Shape released two years later, we have a companion piece to Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!. However, where Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!! was meandering and whimsical, this album has taken the same style on guitar and voice and made it more purposeful and weighty. In fact, in some ways it feels like Next, Let's Try Changing the Shape is a precursor to Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!, an intermediary between song-based albums like Keeping on Breathing and the free form Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!.

Black Blues (soft version) is half of a separately but simultaneously released pair of discs on Les Disques du Soleil et de l'Acier. The other disc Black Blues (violent version) contains different versions of the same tracks in the same order. Originally these two albums were billed as acoustic and electric versions of the same songs, but actually both albums feature electric guitar, so the distinction as soft and violent is more accurate. All six tracks are covers, including very liberal interpretations of See that my Grave is Kept Clean by Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Aihiyo was the name of Haino's cover band. Their first album (1998) covered mostly older Japanese songs. The second album (2000) contained some similar material as well as branching out to include some Western rock, including a cover of Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones. For these two albums Aihiyo was a guitar/bass/drums trio. By 2000, Ikuro Takahashi has left off drumming for both Fushitsusha and Aihiyo. Haino was playing under the Aihiyo name as a solo performer as early as July, 2000. Since then it seems Aihiyo has become a solo project. The two Black Blues records stylistically carry on very much in the Aihiyo vein. They were released, however, under the Haino name rather than the Aihiyo name, presumably based upon the fact that the Haino name had more name recognition than Aihiyo.

Let's format this review as a head-to-head battle between soft and violent versions. Track 1, Black Petal, is--get this--a six and a half minute whisper on the soft album and a five and a half minute shout on the violent album. Therein lies my unhappiness with this pair of releases. In general the soft versions are too soft and violent versions are too violent. You can't please some people and I apparently am one of them. As has been mentioned above, it is one of Haino's trademark techniques to mix the soft and violent together, to put a soft voice over a violent playing of the guitar, or, every once in a while, vice versa. But on these records the soft and the violent have been separated with clinical precision and the result is, at best, underwhelming. In terms of the better version, we can call this round a draw.

Track 2, Black Eyes, continues the trend with 13 minutes of soft versus 9 minutes of violence with reverb. In this round, victory goes to the soft version, which is indeed a lovely song, just slow, slow, slow. For Track 3, Town in Black Fog, we have six minutes of barely audible whispers with no guitar. It's a concept piece, to be sure. This round goes to the violent version by default. The problem with the stupid format I chose for this review is that I have to write the same thing for every single song: Track 4, super slow, super soft version of I Don't Want to Know then a sped up, shrieking version on the violent record. Haino has lots of soft songs that I like quite a bit and he has a ton of shrieking songs that I like, but there isn't a one of them to be found on either of these records. For this round, I go with the soft; it's not a bad version, it's just not particularly engaging. Track 5, damn it, a 12-minute a capella version of Drifting. Pit this against a 13-minute version with guitar. Again, I'll give this round to violent version on the basis that it has guitar.

So we come to the last track, and we are tied at two and a half each. I bet you all are on the edge of your seat, just waiting to find out who clinches the bout with a knock-out blow in the final round. I know I am. In this final track, we have two versions of See that My Grave Is Kept Clean. The original version by Blind Lemon Jefferson that I have is short of 3 minutes and has a little bit of guitar picking and some soulful singing and tons of static hiss due to the age of the archival recording. Let me preface this by saying how I dearly wanted to like either one or both of the Haino versions. I had heard that he had been covering this song live as Aihiyo for a couple years and I was totally ready to embrace these versions. In truth, the soft version of the song is clearly the pick of the litter; it's a beautiful song. However, there is absolutely no resemblance between either one of Haino's versions and the original--none, zero, zilch, nada. Don't look for it. It's not there. And it's not just that the songs have been stretched out into 14 (soft) or 10 (violent) minute versions. There is no attempt to reproduce the basic melody of the original. The violent version is another concept piece; shrieking, bits of guitar, but sadly no music. To call this a cover of See that My Grave Is Kept Clean is a travesty. So, to bring this overly tedious review to a close, I should pick a winner. If you have read this far, then you know who it should be, but I refuse to recognize it. I award this round to the original 3-minute version of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Covers be damned!

Black Blues (violent version) is the second half of a separately but simultaneously released pair of discs on Les Disques du Soleil et de l'Acier. The first disc Black Blues (soft version) contains different versions of the same tracks. All six tracks are covers.

I decided to review the soft and violent versions together, so for a long and tedious review of this album, see Black Blues (soft version).

This is an album of sound effects made on digital theremin. So far as I know, it is the only Haino album that makes you want to laugh when you listen to it. When my daughter and I drive around town in the pick-up truck and listen to this album with the windows rolled down, oh, how we laugh and laugh. "Turn it down," she says when we are stopped at a red light. She is afraid she will be embarrassed if the occupants of the car next to us hear the goofy sounds. "Turn it up," she says, as the light turns green and we pull away.

1. This is the sound that Keiji Haino's flying saucer made when it delivered him to planet Earth.
2. These are the sounds inside the factory when it was manufacturing Keiji Haino's flying saucer on that distant planet.
3. These are the sounds of extraterrestrial crickets when you take a walk with Keiji Haino at dusk through the mushroom gardens of his home planet, as three green moons rise in the horizon.
4. This is Keiji Haino's other spaceship, the shiny one, that he takes out when he wants to impress the girls. It has a heartbeat, a vacuum cleaner, and aquamatic hyperdrive.

This is the worst, most unlistenable Haino album ever! Yes I said it. Worst Album Ever! Haino performing on a sparse, conventional drum kit. This is non-idiomatic improvisation at its worst. Sorry, I will try not to use the word worst anymore in this review. It hurts me to say it more than it hurts you to hear it, or something along those lines. I understand that my inability to find worth in this album is a confirmation of my own mundane inadequacies. If I were a better person, if there was more depth to my soul and more breadth to my wisdom, I would surely appreciate this album. A legendary Dutch percussion genius like Han Bennink could appreciate this album, I bet. (Coincidentally, Bennink and Haino have played together live, February 10, 2008 at the Super Deluxe in Tokyo.) Alan Cummings says that this album "contains nine tracks that showcase an austere yet thrilling investigation of attack and decay on nothing less than the molecular level. As inimitable, and as life-affirming as ever." To that I say, "More power to you." I have engaged in more than sufficient self-deprecation for one paragraph. Let's move along.

This 2 cd set contains both sets of a live performance at Super Deluxe in Tokyo on April 7, 2005. The recording is by no lesser man than the esteemed Mr. Phil Snider. The first track is a 54 minute piece for air synth and voice. This air synth is the same instrument that was called a digital theremin on the studio album, uchu ni karami tsuite iru waga itami. To say that the first set is pretty much a live version of uchu ni karami tsuite iru waga itami is totally unfounded, which you can understand to mean that they, to my ear, contain totally different kinds of music coming from the same instrument. Where the studio album is kind of funny, the live album is a more serious take on the the capabilities of the digital theremin. Gone are the more or less cartoonish space-age sound-effects. Here Haino treats the air synth as a serious instrument which can provide continuous musical accompaniment to the voice. That said, about 39 minutes into the piece, space ships of an alien bird-like race do engage in a cosmic battle over something a little more karmically exciting than a "dispute over the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems." Yeah, I think you can understand what I am talking about.

The second set is a 47 minute piece for hurdy gurdy. This is the fourth disc of solo hurdy gurdy and the first since 2001's Abandon all words at a stroke, so that prayer can come spilling out. It is also the first solo hurdy gurdy release that is from a live show, rather than from the studio. Does that make a damn bit of difference? I don't think so; it isn't like Haino's studio hurdy gurdy albums have heavily utilized any over-dubbing or multi-layering. In each hurdy gurdy album to date, there has been some level of progression in Haino's ability to coax new sounds out of it and that trend continues on this album. Haino has learned to make the hurdy gurdy "flutter" and "whump" like a poorly tuned engine. In other words, there is one time scale, a high frequency time scale associated with the sound waves of the hurdy gurdy, superimposed over that is a lower frequency timescale, on the order of a second, in which there are oscillations in the speed in which the crank is turned. These new skills are showcased within the first six minutes or so and reappear from time to time. About 20 minutes into the performance, Haino coaxes some new sounds out of the instrument, that really don't sound like they could have come from a hurdy gurdy and frankly probably were never intended to. The new territory here involves not only using the hurdy gurdy as a source of drone but also as an improvisational instrument that can provide a varied sound from one second to the next. The drone of the hurdy gurdy while not necessarily calming in Haino's hands, was nonetheless a drone. This new twist perturbs the drone-like quality creating something else, not a pure drone, not a pop song, more like A Forest of Spirits than anything else. Ultimately, it's hard to categorize, because it really isn't like anything else. It seems influenced by the playing of the digital theremin in the first set, in which it is a simple adjustement of an electronic setting to extract a new sound. With the hurdy gurdy it's more difficult to coax new sounds out, but Haino is trying; he's trying. So, it gets points for originality, but it's not the comfortable hurdy gurdy drone we have become accustomed to in each of the previous releases.

Haino's pithy translation of this album title is Won't Becomes Can't. How about If you don't use it, you lose it? Is that what this is supposed to mean? If you don't periodically engage in non-idiomatic improvisation, you lose the ability to do so? Like anything else I suppose.

Solo meditations on the guitar. The room is empty. The echoes are clean and undisturbed. The guitar is gorgeous. In an attempt to make this document readable, I have attempted to vary the reviews. Some reviews are factual and some employ a liberal amount of creativity. Some directly address the music and some address the lyrics or the album title or some random thought utterly unrelated to the music. In short, I attempt to make this admittedly long document a pleasure to read. If it is not a pleasure, then stop here. You owe me no apology. Sometimes, in order to appear clever, I poke fun at the music. One hopes that anyone reading this would recognize that I would not devote the time to writing this, much less to listening to all these records over the years if I didn’t find something ultimately amazing and rewarding in the music. When I make a disparaging remark, as I am prone to do from time to time, it’s like being handed 200 pencils and discovering that a dozen of them are not as sharp as the rest. In other words, it’s not a big deal. So, I come to this album. I turn on the gear in my brain that says let’s write something entertaining about this review, something different that what I wrote for the previous 31 reviews of Haino solo records. What can I say? It’s not writer’s block. There is any number of avenues I could pursue. Some of them are formulaic and some of them rely on a formula which is simply putting oneself in a frame of mind in which unexpected and random thoughts emerge, which provide a sense of spontaneity and uniqueness to the review. These avenues are open. However, as I listen to the music, the term mediation comes to mind. One hears in this music Haino baring his soul. Perhaps, Haino bares his soul in all of his music. In this solo guitar, it is more readily apparent. The music brooks no witty remark or clever repartee. The string of recent solo guitar albums that began to define a non-idiomatic “idiom” of Haino’s own creation, works that included mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!, Next let’s try changing the shape, and hikari yami uchitokeaishi kono hibiki, is continued here. There is a sense of a master intentionally creating a language of guitar, much as Derek Bailey did, that is unique to his own person. It’s beyond cleverness. What has helped me reach this revelation is watching the two recent posthumously released DVDs of Derek Bailey from his stay in Barcelona, released by Incus Records. In these cds, you see a master, his legacy fully formed and defined, using his prodigious skills of creativity to create something new, something brilliant, something quintessentially Derek Bailey and at the same time different. Many (including myself) used to jokingly refer to DB’s playing as “plinking and plonking”. It was funny but at the same time there was a certain onomatopoeia in it that made the description very much on the mark. In these last two DVDs, while it is still the same old DB, you can’t call the music “plinking and plonking”; it is simply too beautiful, too well-measured, too splendid for that description. In this string of Haino releases, one can sense a similar coming into one’s own sense of mastery. Admittedly, Haino’s idiom is less serene than Bailey’s. Roughly halfway into the 68-minute track, Haino adds a noisy, chaotic element. I think we can all accept that Haino has a fondness for distortion and feedback and, some may insist, any characterization of Haino’s unique musical vision, must necessarily contain this element. Some may assert that early records such as Ama No Gawa of 1973, which is largely all a roar, epitomizes Haino’s personal musical vision. I don’t think so. I think Haino has repeatedly mixed the hard and the soft, the musical and the dissonant, and it takes both elements to capture him. In this disc, we have both elements, albeit with an emphasis on the mellow. I don’t suggest that this is Haino’s masterpiece or his apex. No, I expect that this is only a launching pad for further heights.

This is the fifth album of solo hurdy gurdy. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think there is a long line of people clamoring for another hurdy gurdy release. I was somewhat surprised by this release myself. Clearly, this is an avenue that Haino loves exploring and continues to explore.

The previous hurdy gurdy albums had a polyphonic richness. The first track on this album has a kind of stripped down effect. There are two sounds emanating from the instrument-a shriek and a mechanical grinding. Several minutes into it a hum joins the mix. I think we should take a step back and consider the journey. Haino takes the instrument and single-handedly creates a genre of experimental hurdy gurdy drone. (Yes, I know that Jim O’Rourke also released a hurdy gurdy album, Happy Days in 1997, but I am ignoring that in the present discussion, even though it was pretty good.) It was Haino’s thing to take this drone and gradually over the course of the first three albums tame it and make a couple beautiful songs with it. There was a process here of rendering the instrument more musical. The last couple albums have reversed the trend. Haino explores making less musical sounds from it. “To what purpose?” I ask. No, in truth, I don’t understand this. I don’t understand the purpose of this fifth hurdy gurdy album and I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Where is he going with this? The second track is substantially more musical, but I still have my questions. Why? Someone might argue that it is absurd for a person who enjoys 25 different Haino guitar albums to wonder why there are 5 different hurdy gurdy albums. It’s just a matter of taste, right. If you really enjoy the music, then you will enjoy the latest and greatest release. I suppose there is truth to that. I suppose I might enjoy it, but there is little avenue to listen to it because, get this, NOBODY ELSE I KNOW INCLUDING EVERY MEMBER OF MY FAMILY CAN STAND IT. Don’t get me wrong; I have properly trained/brainwashed my children to dig Keiji Haino, but they don’t love him on hurdy gurdy. They really love him playing in front of the pink couch on the first Haino/Yoshida/Kawabata dvd, that they like. As I noted in the review of the fourth hurdy gurdy disc, there are times when he plays the hurdy gurdy like he plays digital theremin, like a generator of anharmonic sound effects. It’s dull, I’m afraid to say, dull. Even the second track that started out sweet degenerates into this morass of screeching. Aube would be proud to call this album his own. Things only get worse in the third track. Twelve minutes in we get some distorted sine wave action over a background of feedback. It makes no sense. Not only do I not appreciate it but I don’t perceive the conceptual framework in which someone could appreciate it. This is coming from someone who really found some of the earlier hurdy gurdy work to be brilliant. What I need is a couple pages of translated liner notes to tell me what to look for in this years. My ears, on their own, are inadequate to the task. Could someone find something kind to say of this album? Certainly. Long time Haino aficionado Biba Kopf, a writer for The Wire, wrote in his excellent review of this album that, “The third track, incidentally, is the album's magnificent centerpiece, evolving from a manic hoedown into a frenzied dance warding off the onset of melancholia represented by a buzzing secondary drone.” There you have it. It is possible to find brilliance in this. It’s just not me. To that I say, “It takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round.” Thank goodness. For the record, I don’t want music that wards off melancholia. I have a natural predisposition for melancholia and I like my music to encourage it. Maybe that is why I don’t like this album. Thank you, Biba!

closing to solo recordings
Well, here we are at the end of the solo section: 33 solo albums at the time of writing. Having listened to all 33 of them again, is there a favorite? To be honest, in my review of this body of Haino's solo work, some of the earlier albums I had listened to 100 times before and they were exactly as I remembered them. The latter ones I had listened to less and some of them I had very little recollection of at all. Some of them really jumped out at me, particularly Mazu wa iro o nakusouka!!. This is a really beautiful solo guitar record. Today I like it best. Tomorrow it may well be something else.

proceed to fushitsusha recordings

all text copyright david keffer. distribution without consent is prohibited. contact the author.