Perhaps rather clumsily, back in 2017 in our tribute to the recently passed Folke Rabe, I discussed the idea of a ‘bottled performance’. Whilst, with retrospect, I’m not sure bottled was the right word, I think I just meant records that demand to be savoured. They aren’t things you casually play; they are appointments you make that last their playing duration. It’s time in your favourite chair, zoned out on the floor or garden. Your headphones or speakers are up loud, it’s time spent one on one – just you, and the music.
As that article also suggested, for us Keiji Hainio’s work has for a long time, easily fitted into this elevated classification. The daunting black sleeved discography of his band, his most well-known project – Fushitsusha, a stack of dizzying solo releases, countless jaw dropping collaborations, Hainio’s discography is vast. Regularly featuring hugely lengthy tracks, alongside equally elongated titles, feeling a step into a very distinctive bubblingly odd, if fully realised, sonic world.
It’s clear as well, this world is at times a challenging one. Early in his career Blue Cheer was often framed as the point of origin. But in essence this arc of music has morphed into clusters of reverb-soaked shamanic abstraction, spikey masses that somehow initially seems thundering and threatening, where in fact, with some patience becomes utter brilliance at the very crumbling edge of rock music.
This new album on regular collaborator Oren Ambarchi’s flawless Black Truffle Records, gathers music from one of Hainio’s lesser-known projects, the trio of Nijiumu. Featuring Haino, alongside Tetuzi Akiyama and Takashi Matsuoka, playing string, wind and percussion instruments, electric guitar and bass, joined at points with Haino’s unmistakeable voice. Despite the instrumental range, much here blurs and amalgamates into some lethal kosmiche paste.
This new release offers two vast pieces, the 65-minute adventure in three parts, recorded in 1994 – When I sing, I slip into the microphone. Into that void, I bring comrade “prayers”, then, turning to face the outside, together we explode. And the utterly wild 27-minutes from 1973’s 4th Movement: The kotodama that attempts to take back all energy into itself.
It’s worth lingering again on that title – When I sing, I slip into the microphone. Into that void, I bring comrade “prayers”, then, turning to face the outside, together we explode… reading like it could almost be the most brain melting Oblique Strategy card ever made.
Nijiumu immediately feel like a group that’s zoning in on quieter textures. The vast second part of When we sing… slowly gathers in foggy drones and oily distortion. At times we are at sea in thick hanging vapours, then as quickly, in deep twinkly space. Everything is a slow and unexpectedly endless transitioning.
Parts feel Taj Mahal Travellers or MU (Michael Ranta, Mike Lewis and Connie Plank), or cavernous mode Pauline Oliveros rumbling as the music maps out huge voids in the dark, until a guitar slowly chimes out of the inky soup. From here we go, as the title somehow fittingly suggests – into that void.
Things get louder, things grow and dissolve; the floor and walls disappear for the remaining 40 minutes. You are guided towards every new sound, like a bannister newly formed in the ether. Nothing makes any sense here, but it’s all somehow perfect.
4th movement… is a different animal again. A previously unheard solo piece of pulverised psych from 1973. A block of homemade electronics, a storm of fuzz and disorientation, mirages, grids and stroboscopic lights. It’s immediately years ahead of Merzbow and Metal Machine Music, and quite possibly historically remarkable, a dense blackhole that blossoms in corrosive standing waves for 27 acid etched minutes.
This isn’t music to socialise to, more like standing on an atom at the edge of some screaming chaos. But always, just controlled enough to see the outline of something that approximates a sense of momentum. It’s music that leaves a wake in the air and your brain as it surges forward…
Clearly this album has moved us, it’s a release that took just one listen to be in awe of. Here at OBLADADA, one word that often comes up as something we love is music with a sense of adventure. Music that scoops you up somewhere that, after magnetising you and sending you through its matrix, drops you off later somewhere different, despite that fact you’ve not actually moved…
When I sing, I slip into the microphone. Into that void, I bring comrade “prayers”, then, turning to face the outside, together we explode does this and more. Brimming with mysterious and magnetic power, it is clearly a record saviour, after picking your moment carefully.
A 65-minute appointment with a bizarre and elemental force – a full-on mind blower…
When I sing, I slip into the microphone. Into that void, I bring comrade “prayers”, then, turning to face the outside, together we explode… is out now on Black Truffle Records.
Available digitally and 2xLP.
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