Suishou No Fune
Prayer For Chibi

"The crystal ship is being filled / A thousand girls, a thousand thrills / A million ways to spend your time / When we get back I'll drop a line".

Exactly, "Suishou No Fune" means "crystal ship". And that ship has traveled far, it has sailed through endless oceans and weathered a thousand storms, since it set sail - from Venice - one day in 1967. It stopped over in Japan a few years ago, and there two people boarded, a man and a woman; two illegitimate heirs of Keiji Haino, probably, two among many that the Avant-gardist Master scattered here and there, between Tokyo and its surroundings. And they are still on the journey; when they will return, it is not known. But we have good news about them; they are alive, and occasionally they send us their impressions; the chronicle of what they see, aboard that ship.

"To see", yes; but in the midst of so much mist, it’s not an easy task. The proverbial third eye would be needed, and it's not said that they lack it, in fact. Colors and sensations are what can be perceived. And blue is the most recurring color in the depiction of the described landscapes; the color of sadness. 

The color of the themes translated into music by "Prayer For Chibi": anguish, desolation, death. Abandon all hope, you who place the two records of this quintessential 2008 work (Holy Mountain the label): here there is no room for hope, or at least very little of it; an uninterrupted cry is what one hears. Rarely has there been something more heart-wrenching, something that could wound the heart to this extent: perhaps the laments of the second part of "Machine Gun", yes, they approach this (that is: the despair without escape when the shooting is over, and all that remains are empty and inanimate scenarios: no one like Hendrix has been able to translate death into music). But here Vietnam is not the source of inspiration; nor is it the death of a human being, to be honest.

...Chibi was the cat of Pirako Kurenai (the female half of the duo, so to speak); and he had passed away, a year before, due to a bad illness, leaving an unfillable void in the couple. The album is a monumental tribute to him, among feedback, dissonances, and 8 majestic, long guitar litanies. A single long prayer, indeed. Music more nocturnal and fascinating than ever: two sinister, icy guitars, conversing in arabesques of spectral magnificence. Echoes, reverberations, subdued laments. Everything flows, fluid and natural, though completely improvised, everything is perpetual movement: the changes in tone are free and random, I would say almost instinctive, just as instinctive is the harmony between man and woman, which makes two guitars seem like one thing, a unique substance. Yes, between one song and another, moments of fierce harshness arrive, but the approximately two hours of music mostly flow in a sidereal quiet, maybe anguishing at the beginning but inevitably cathartic, as the minutes pass. It is the voice of the stars, of the stars that "know everything", as recites the title of a piece from the second album; it is to this mysterious universal wisdom, and not to a revealed God, that the soul of the departed is entrusted, before losing itself in the oblivion of matter.

"Before you slip into unconsciousness / I'd like to have another kiss / Another flashing chance at bliss".