Japanese legendary polymath Keiji Haino is a singular artist, known mainly as a guitarist and vocalist (first at the psych-rock power Fushitsusha), but he is also a multi-instrumentalist who practices his uncompromising art in many improvised genres, from the gentlest to the noisiest and almost unbearable.
Haino’s Black Blues is one of his most enigmatic and radical albums. It was released originally twenty years ago in 2004 as two separate albums, each one with six identical blues songs, performed in the same order, including a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s «See That My Grave Is Kept Clean» (called in Japanese 俺の墓をきれいにしてくれ) by the now-defunct French label Les Disques Du Soleil Et De L’Acier. The first album, the Violent Version, featured Haino on electric guitar and vocals while the second album, the Soft Version, featured Haino on acoustic guitar and vocals, with identical blues covers. Now these albums are re-released by the Australian label Room40, with a new abstract cover (the original black and white cover had a photo of Haino, but without a name or the title of the albums) with a The physical version of the album also includes a poster.
The first six songs are the violent ones. The songs are sung-screamed in Japanese and delivered with raw and naked emotional power and with a sense of tangible, urgent intensity, as if Haino pours his most painful feelings with no filters, with a force that consumes all it comes in contact with. He is unaccompanied only by his brutal, distorted and noisy electric guitar that sounds as if carving a winding path – part rhythm, part harmony – through monolithic rocks, with an unfathomable determination but also with generosity. He makes his version «See That My Grave Is Kept Clean» completely his own, transformed into an unpredictable and terrifying lament that has almost nothing to with the Blind Lemon Jefferson song.
The latter unplugged six songs, the softer ones, are delivered in a totally different manner. They suggest Haino’s most fragile and gentle side, but, still, carry a a mournful and desperate atmosphere. His whispering, vulnerable and patient delivery seeks a deeper resolution within the songs and his sparse and deliberately subtle playing of the acoustic guitar stresses his profound melodic sensibility, and at times these songs sound like some kind of twisted lullabies. But these songs also radiate an unsettled need to strip and distill these songs to their emotional essence. The 15-minute version of «See That My Grave Is Kept Clean» resonates briefly the driving rhythmic pulse of the original song.
Black Blues offers almost two hours of the quintessential art of Keiji Haino. These blues songs encapsulate an an artist with a force like no other whose work only continues to grow deeper in its wonder and profundity.
Eyal Hareuveni
Keiji Haino (vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar)
