keiji haino, tenshi no gijinka
The current issue of The Wire (377, July 2015) has a Primer feature on Keiji Haino.
If that means nothing to you, then you're exactly where I was somewhere around 2006-7. He was just a name I'd seen mentioned, though he seemed intriguing. His records though seemed hard to get hold of unless you had a fortune.
Eventually I found a blog, probably long-since defunct, which had a large collection of downloads of let's say questionable legality. And as a law-abiding citizen I devoured the whole lot.
The records were even better than I'd hoped for. But the most exciting, the most alien, the most memorable was one called Tenshi No Gijinka.
I had no idea what the title meant, what the record was about, how it was recorded, whether he was even singing words. All I knew was that the cover art was a motion-blurred photo of Keiji Haino with a drum, and that the record consisted almost entirely of percussion and voice. And of course silence.
The three most striking things were first, the silences. Silence wasn't just something that happened when he wasn't making noise. Silence wasn't just a setting for sounds to happen in. Silence wasn't a big mute to make the chorus more compelling when it kicked back in. There was no chorus. There were no obvious conventional song-structures, and the sounds were not just sounds or noises or accidental utterances.
But the silence. Silence was wielded, silence was utilised. Silence was a deliberate, structured, active and dynamic part of the composition. Without those silences the tracks simply wouldn't work in the same way.
Set against the silence were the voice and percussion. That voice was the second striking thing. Since I don't speak Japanese, and couldn't in any case tell whether the utterances were linguistic or not, all I was left with was the sound.
The voice ranged from deep to falsetto high, sometimes physically resonant, at others seeming to become disembodied. From harsh to beautiful in moments. Sometimes apparently weighted with emotion, at others more abstract - a pure sonic element in the songs.
And it always worked sonically. This wasn't voice for the sake of it. This wasn't an attempt to fill the silence. This was voice as an instrument - something that's all too rare. And it needed to be. It couldn't be superfluous. For most of the record the only, or primary elements were silence, percussion and voice.
The third striking element was the degree of intention. I'm not quite sure that's the right word, but it seems to fit. 'Precision' or 'control' imply something extrinsic, something imposed on the music. The precision here didn't seem measured so much as it did an organic and natural condition of the pieces.
If it was striking in the abstract, while listening to the record, it was even more so in the flesh, when I tried to imitate the techniques. Where Keiji Haino's silences, percussive incidents, and vocal utterances were sharp, confident and well placed, mine were blurred, hesitant and sloppy. It was an important lesson; there was more here than met the ear. And there was more to learn. More to learn about listening, more to learn about this mysterious artist, and much much more to learn about making sounds.
The record still sounds fresh to me. I still find new things in it, I still test my skills against it; I've gotten better, but in comparison I'm still sloppy, unfocussed, fuzzy, unconfident, imprecise.
Tenshi No Gijinka doesn't feature in The Wire's Primer. But then Keiji Haino has over 200 releases since 1970, ranging across Japanese folk, blues, rock, psychedelia, percussion and voice in many group and collaborative situations as well as solo, and utilising a dizzying range of instruments.
I've seen that title translated as both Personification of an Angel and Seraphic Imposter. Whether the original Japanese is ambiguous in that way or not, I like that the two translations are obviously related and yet have quite different senses.
It may not be the ideal introduction to Keiji Haino, although it worked for me. Perhaps it might be more accessible were the track listing reversed. Throughout the album the tracks gradually gather in density, more sounds being added, and the silences lessened. But then were you to listen in reverse, with elements progressively stripped away, you'd lose the alien shock of that first exposure.
The reviews I've seen on Amazon seem to me to miss the point. There's a certain - probably unintentional - sense of bragging about this obscure, difficult, extreme, dark, evil music that you probably won't understand. And there's something similar in reverse in some of the comments under YouTube videos - this time claiming it's mere noise, unskilled, rubbish.
It's none of those things. It's accessible, using the simplest of instruments and techniques, and always (however sparse and full of silence) clearly structured. It's definitely the work of someone who knows exactly what they're doing. And I don't see it as deliberately extreme or provocative, it is what it is; the sounds and techniques are inherent in the songs.
So yeah, I'd recommend it. In fact almost any Keiji Haino record. In similar veins his solo debut from 1981 Watashi Dake? and 2011's Un Autre Chemin Vers L'Utime are also worth a listen. Hit YouTube, SoundCloud and elsewhere, use a search engine, see what downloadable purchases are out there. Definitely take a look at The Wire and use it as a starting point. And above all, have fun.
If that means nothing to you, then you're exactly where I was somewhere around 2006-7. He was just a name I'd seen mentioned, though he seemed intriguing. His records though seemed hard to get hold of unless you had a fortune.
Eventually I found a blog, probably long-since defunct, which had a large collection of downloads of let's say questionable legality. And as a law-abiding citizen I devoured the whole lot.
The records were even better than I'd hoped for. But the most exciting, the most alien, the most memorable was one called Tenshi No Gijinka.
I had no idea what the title meant, what the record was about, how it was recorded, whether he was even singing words. All I knew was that the cover art was a motion-blurred photo of Keiji Haino with a drum, and that the record consisted almost entirely of percussion and voice. And of course silence.
The three most striking things were first, the silences. Silence wasn't just something that happened when he wasn't making noise. Silence wasn't just a setting for sounds to happen in. Silence wasn't a big mute to make the chorus more compelling when it kicked back in. There was no chorus. There were no obvious conventional song-structures, and the sounds were not just sounds or noises or accidental utterances.
But the silence. Silence was wielded, silence was utilised. Silence was a deliberate, structured, active and dynamic part of the composition. Without those silences the tracks simply wouldn't work in the same way.
Set against the silence were the voice and percussion. That voice was the second striking thing. Since I don't speak Japanese, and couldn't in any case tell whether the utterances were linguistic or not, all I was left with was the sound.
The voice ranged from deep to falsetto high, sometimes physically resonant, at others seeming to become disembodied. From harsh to beautiful in moments. Sometimes apparently weighted with emotion, at others more abstract - a pure sonic element in the songs.
And it always worked sonically. This wasn't voice for the sake of it. This wasn't an attempt to fill the silence. This was voice as an instrument - something that's all too rare. And it needed to be. It couldn't be superfluous. For most of the record the only, or primary elements were silence, percussion and voice.
The third striking element was the degree of intention. I'm not quite sure that's the right word, but it seems to fit. 'Precision' or 'control' imply something extrinsic, something imposed on the music. The precision here didn't seem measured so much as it did an organic and natural condition of the pieces.
If it was striking in the abstract, while listening to the record, it was even more so in the flesh, when I tried to imitate the techniques. Where Keiji Haino's silences, percussive incidents, and vocal utterances were sharp, confident and well placed, mine were blurred, hesitant and sloppy. It was an important lesson; there was more here than met the ear. And there was more to learn. More to learn about listening, more to learn about this mysterious artist, and much much more to learn about making sounds.
The record still sounds fresh to me. I still find new things in it, I still test my skills against it; I've gotten better, but in comparison I'm still sloppy, unfocussed, fuzzy, unconfident, imprecise.
Tenshi No Gijinka doesn't feature in The Wire's Primer. But then Keiji Haino has over 200 releases since 1970, ranging across Japanese folk, blues, rock, psychedelia, percussion and voice in many group and collaborative situations as well as solo, and utilising a dizzying range of instruments.
I've seen that title translated as both Personification of an Angel and Seraphic Imposter. Whether the original Japanese is ambiguous in that way or not, I like that the two translations are obviously related and yet have quite different senses.
It may not be the ideal introduction to Keiji Haino, although it worked for me. Perhaps it might be more accessible were the track listing reversed. Throughout the album the tracks gradually gather in density, more sounds being added, and the silences lessened. But then were you to listen in reverse, with elements progressively stripped away, you'd lose the alien shock of that first exposure.
The reviews I've seen on Amazon seem to me to miss the point. There's a certain - probably unintentional - sense of bragging about this obscure, difficult, extreme, dark, evil music that you probably won't understand. And there's something similar in reverse in some of the comments under YouTube videos - this time claiming it's mere noise, unskilled, rubbish.
It's none of those things. It's accessible, using the simplest of instruments and techniques, and always (however sparse and full of silence) clearly structured. It's definitely the work of someone who knows exactly what they're doing. And I don't see it as deliberately extreme or provocative, it is what it is; the sounds and techniques are inherent in the songs.
So yeah, I'd recommend it. In fact almost any Keiji Haino record. In similar veins his solo debut from 1981 Watashi Dake? and 2011's Un Autre Chemin Vers L'Utime are also worth a listen. Hit YouTube, SoundCloud and elsewhere, use a search engine, see what downloadable purchases are out there. Definitely take a look at The Wire and use it as a starting point. And above all, have fun.
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