Fushitsusha
Untitled (Live I)

But where did the paranoid-psychotic Keiji Haino go? It's unknown: almost a decade of silence, and he had seemingly disappeared. We left him in 1981, the year of "Watashi Dake", a bizarre solo debut for voice, guitar, and various noises: lunatic sound fragments that someone tried to define as "avant-garde." Then, nothing more: a void, a black hole into which our protagonist was practically sucked, for almost all of the Eighties. Many wondered: is he dead? Did he leave everything and go to meditate in Tibet? Or is he working on some of his peculiarities...?

The last hypothesis, in the end, proved to be the right one: eight years pass, and in 1989 - surprising everyone - this untitled (double) album is released: "Fushitsusha," which is what is read on the unsettling cover, is the enigmatic name of an ensemble actually born several years earlier, but never tested on record. Along with Haino are three other eccentrics of his level: the guitarist Maki Miura, bassist Yasushi Ozawa, drummer Jun Kosugi. Rock musicians, veterans of the Japanese alternative scene, and this alone would make one ponder: we are far from the homemade extravagance of solo Haino (and lunatic experimenter), what is heard - as shocking and alienating as it may be - is not avant-garde. And it's not exactly Rock in the strict sense, to tell the truth (no one imagines it yet). But it is something shocking, something too grand and mysterious to comprehend. We open the album: eight tracks in total, eight unnamed tracks, eight long electric litanies with very few harmonic variations (if any, in some cases). Smoke in the eyes, nothing else. Vertigo. Nausea. Anguish. But also sensations, colors (dark, mostly), flashes and images in the dark. Suddenly, that "purple haze" that a Seattle guitarist sang about 20 years earlier comes to mind, and I think: it's Her, I'm sure, if one could imagine that haze in music, it would undoubtedly have the traits of this sick deformed sound. Whoever produced this music is not a musician: he is a brain explorer, but even more, a madman who should be institutionalized as soon as possible. Therefore, a Genius. A definition that can safely be used when talking about Kenji.

Listeners, bow down before what is the undisputed Bible of Japanese Space, the Supreme Work that encapsulates within itself, amplifying to the nth degree, the creative Geniuses of all the great improvisers of the past: here is Hendrix, the tutelary Deity of the entire album, whose ghost hovers everywhere; here are the Dead of "Dark Star," murky, icy, nocturnal; here are the Amon Duul II of "Yeti", passionate, fierce, apocalyptic; here is the primal brutality of the early "krauts," here are their kilometric, delirious instrumental rides, highways to infinity. Here are the Velvet, here are their hypnotic desperate chants, here is the solitude of Tim Buckley from "Lorca," here again are Hawkwind and Ufo and, if wanted, the Flower Travellin' Band. All in this unnamed album, which someone had the idea of renaming Live I even though it is not Live (it's a bit like the meaning of "Live" on the cover of the first "Rovescio Della Medaglia," for those who remember: recordings not taken from a concert, but made in the studio in direct capture, without overdubs). For a total of a hundred minutes of madness, among dull laments, feedback, distortions, "spastic" and highly acidic arpeggios, a general terrible, obsessive, infernal atmosphere. Haino's harmonica introducing the first, limping "slow-blues" (but the expression should not be taken too literally) recalls an equally famous and "demonic" harmonica: Ozzy's in "The Wizard," while his vocalizations are disjointed groans made frightening by the reverb and the quality (not excellent) of the audio; sometimes they are prolonged murmurs accompanying the howling guitar, sometimes shrill and extremely high-pitched screams, enough to pierce the eardrums.

It is "Psych-Blues" radical, harsh, impenetrable. Enriched by extraordinary guitar solos, "cosmic" in their total freedom, blinding, like sudden beams of light tearing through the darkness. A crescendo of disconcerting intensity, a ritual of moods and sounds that culminates in a closing 26-minute Jam: noise and rage in the first part, unreal suspension in the second, guitar flashes of wonderful beauty to close. High tension throughout its duration, leaving one spellbound: indescribable in words, it is a pure emotion. To close an album of extremely difficult listening, if it were ever necessary to reiterate that.

This is another journey, much more extreme and arduous than the one I once suggested with Yonin Bayashi, definitely not recommended for lovers of technique and the "clean" sounds of certain Progressive; much more suitable for lovers of Grunge, Noise, experimentation, and jam sessions in all its aspects. And naturally, for Hendrix aficionados of all ages: if you're looking for a Japanese album that has within itself the passion and the allure of the old concerts at Fillmore West, this is definitely for you. Also available is a second "live," as anonymous as this one, from 1991: remarkable, but it does not reach the charm of the first. And then there is the studio discography of Fushitsusha, to possibly complement with Haino's solo production: but that's another story, I don't have time to tell you...