Keiji Haino – Watashi Dake? CD
This my favorite solo disc by Keiji Haino. It’s a 1993 reissue of a rare, obscure, Japanese LP from 1981. This is a very sperm-filled set of recordings and debuts many of the crude elements of Haino’s technique that would more fully blossom a decade later. The first track maintains a very quiet area of contemplation occasionally interjected with intense shouts, whispers and coos—all accented with Haino’s copyrighted feedback microphone. Tracks two through 12 are mostly in the shorter range, featuring Haino solo on guitar and voice. The sounds range from spare pick-to-string hits and scrapes with solemn vocals, soft singing with occasional guitar tangles, mangled feedback noise with shouted vocals, the appearance of a strange and low-pitched string instrument, sparse string fluctuations with beautiful singing, shy guitar noodling with short shouts, muffled ’n’ stumbled strums with high-pitched vocal interjections and plenty of quiet muffled rhythms.
By far the highlight of this CD reissue is track 13: a previously unreleased, ultra-wide, infinity-splaying, 28-minute reality canvas of ridiculously overloaded, squealing guitar feedback and supremely scalding, amp-cutting, ear drum-molesting lift-off + white-out of exploding sound embers and ever-spreading auditory flurries of uncertain origin. Not to mention occasional intoned vocals from beyond the abyss. Recorded in 1981, this is a prime, early example of Keiji Haino operating within his own perfect, personal vacuum–a spontaneous masterpiece of no-thought-only-action activity.
It all comes housed in another of those mega-nice, mini-LP gatefold jackets—this time on slick, glossy paper with vintage photos of Haino standing in a concrete circle. The booklet inside contains more recent live photos, plus an old one of him smiling while holding an ice cream cone and a toy, which is one of my favorite Keiji Haino photos ever.
Label: PSF Catalog Number: PSFD-38 Format: CD Packaging: Mini-LP gatefold Tracks: 13 Total Time: 73:43 Country: Japan Released: 1993 Related Artists: Fushitsusha More: Forced Exposure, Official, Poison Pie, Wikipedia
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