This double live album came as a total surprise to me. I’m more familiar with Haino’s guitar work and these two live performances are from a totally different place to his six string performances. One disc is dedicated to the hurdy gurdy and the other to an instrument called an air synth (it’s new to me and now I want one). Both overlap in terms of mood but the different sonic characteristics of these distinctive sounding instruments make for interesting listening.Archive / Important
The two CDs come packaged in a beautiful fold out sleeve in black card with all the text and images embossed or printed in black ink (designed by Stephen O’Malley, who is a cover art machine of the highest caliber). It’s nearly worth buying for the art alone. Luckily the music enclosed on the discs makes it a bargain. I’m not a big fan of Keiji Haino: some of his albums are good but sometimes he just bores the hell out of me. This is probably the best recording of his that I’ve come across. It is quite accessible compared to even his less extreme guitar albums (I need a stiff drink to enjoy the likes of Black Blues which has normal songs I already knew on it!).
The hurdy gurdy disc is monumental. Much like his guitar playing, he completely ignores the “correct” way of playing and approaches the instrument from a different slant. Haino makes the hurdy gurdy sing and scream, at times it sounds like a barely controlled animal. When the sound all of a sudden stops and Haino’s voice rings out alone, a shiver ran down my spine. On the other disc, the air synth sounds utterly amazing: it's like an old analog synth with a bad case of flatulence (don’t worry, this is a good thing). Haino builds up a huge droning mass of sound that feels like a wave on the verge of breaking. It finally does break when the percussion kicks in. Haino loops something that sounds like a marimba and more familiar drums and cymbals to great effect. His vocals sound all too human amidst the din. It is a powerful performance.
James Plotkin did an excellent job mastering the discs. As they are essentially high quality bootleg recordings the sound isn’t perfect. However Plotkin has gleaned as much as he can from the source material to give a final result that isn’t polished but the rough edges have been sanded down. There is still enough coarseness to the recordings to make them sound that bit warmer and grittier. This is a great release, especially if like me you aren’t that gone on Haino as this album really opened my eyes to his talent.
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