Fushitsusha
Allegorical Misunderstanding

I am not a big fan of Japanese culture and arts, so I'm not a great connoisseur of the Japanese music scene either, apart from having listened some time ago to a few somewhat more important bands from the Hardcore scene (like Gauze or The Stalin, of whom I don't own any records). But despite my almost non-existent inclination to scour the web pages that discuss Japanese groups, one way or another I stumbled upon a band that piqued my interest in music coming from Tokyo and its surroundings a bit. This is the band Fushitsusha, originating right from the Japanese capital and consisting, at least as far as regular musicians go, only of that genius Keiji Haino, who sings (a little), plays the electric guitar, and also dabbles with some other instruments. Accompanying him is a gang of artists who, I believe, change album after album. The personal discovery of this project, created in 1978 and carried on almost to this day, led me to rummage a bit online to find some information about the context to which the band belongs; this search led me to discover a small but significant Pandora's box filled with many interesting Japanese artists who are quite experimental, moreover close to the movement (perhaps some people know it) Japanoise, which clearly brings to mind “Japan” and “Noise,” an interesting combination for those who want their ears violated by crazy artists with almond-shaped eyes who make noise their lifestyle.

But returning to Fushitsusha: Haino's band was born in unsuspecting times, at the end of the '70s when the greats of Kraut-Rock and Psychedelia were attaining, after great records, almost planetary fame and recognition (except for some phenomena that remained a bit more European rather than global). The Japanese band, thus, despite debuting a little after certain sacred monsters of Kraut, Prog, and Psychedelia, enters this vast panorama in a rather original way, without aping the big names, but instead proposing their own vision of Rock experimentation, of which perhaps we should speak more.  

Fundamentally, as mentioned, Fushitsusha plays psychedelic music that is influenced by European Kraut-Rock and partly also by certain Progressive, but adds to these “bases” a spiral of sounds and a purely Noise-Rock approach. “Allegorical Misunderstanding” is considered by many to be somewhat the group's signature album. Released in 1993, hence a bit later than the early stages of Haino and his associates' career, it is a complex work that can be bewildering, not automatically assimilable at first listen. The 10 tracks present have progressive names ranging from "Magic I" to "Magic X"; not in all of them does Haino sing (in Japanese), allowing the musical notes to speak for him. The result is a somewhat dark work, very experimental but well-calibrated. For the more experienced of the East Asian experimental/psychedelic scene, I could say that these Fushitsusha might resemble their compatriots Ghost and Acid Mother Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO, who are somewhat more known than Haino's band even on a global level.

Among the 10 pieces, "Magic I" and "Magic IX" are particularly noteworthy; the former is more dreamy, dreamlike, whimsical, and capable of immediately making us fall in love with the Fushitsusha project, while the latter is more complex, structured, almost 14 minutes long, and dense with the genius mixed with madness of the band's frontman, a character of undeniable importance in the Japanese psychedelic scene. However, do not think that the other tracks merely frame or fill out the album: each has its own reason within Haino's strange mind. It will then be up to the listener to try to understand and re-elaborate the noisy, arrhythmic, spectral, and sometimes extreme sound message into personal emotions and considerations.