Fushitsusha – Pathetique
Like most of Keiji Haino’s cover artwork, Pathetique’s mini-LP-style gatefold jacket is covered top-to-bottom with dark ink on black paper, underscoring the immense depth of the ideas, emotions and sounds contained therein.
The CD opens with a stately, slowly descending pile of crunch chords and amp-whistle clocking in at a mere five minutes (the blink of a hummingbird’s eye in Haino’s universe), serving as a more-than-adequate intro to all the lost squall and splendor to follow. Track two’s supremely slop-o-guitar sound-shards chop and challenge and veer startingly into full-on destruction and modern psych passages that sear all synonyms. Song number three shifts repeatedly from an extremely catchy yet dissonant, descending, mantra-rock groove into more improvised, feedback bliss at all the “wrong” moments—which sounds so right. At well over 40 minutes, track four stretches out a solid ocean of electronic guitar distortion into one of those “timeless / infinite moments” Haino discussed when profiled in The Wire magazine.
Overall, this album spreads out easily like jagged peanut butter across a very high plateau on Keiji Haino’s extremely personal mountain (Live II being the very summit). As often as possible, I exit this reality and go slipping, tripping into another. With sound as transcendent as this, it’s easy. Let Air Fushitsusha spirit you away. Flights departing nightly.
Label: PSF Catalog Number: PSFD-50 Format: CD Packaging: Mini-LP gatefold Tracks: 4 Total Time: 74:55 Country: Japan Released: 1995 Related Artists: Keiji Haino More: Forced Exposure, Official, Poison Pie, Wikipedia
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