Natsuki Tamura and Keiji Haino's "What happened there?"

Back in 2008, I was listening a lot to "Japanoise" practitioners like High Rise, Mainliner, and Acid Mothers Temple. The god-king of Japanese noise/rock/experimental improv was (and remains) the shadowy and mysterious Keiji Haino, whose Velvet Underground-meets-James Earl Jones in Conan the Barbarian visual aspect is emblematic of his uncompromising musical stance. 

Recorded artifacts like Haino's 1991 double live album with Fushitsusha, or his collab with folk singer Kan Mikami and bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa from around the same time (Live in the First Year of Heisei) were both rarer than hen's teeth and uber expensive to boot, but the samplings from Haino's intimidatingly mammoth discography I found posted on YouTube were imposing. (I'm thinking in particular of a meeting of Haino with Acid Mothers Temple guitarist Makoto Kawabata and Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida that's kind of terrifying in its unbridled ferocity.) When Black Editions reissued Haino's 1981 debut LP Watashi Dake? in 2017, I found it a more easily fathomable (and quiet) example of his daunting, ominous sound. 

A year ago, Haino appeared at the Aremo Koremo (Each and Every) festival, curated by trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and his wife, pianist Satoko Fujii, in a first time duo with Tamura. On January 24, the couple's Libra Records label will release What happened there?, the live recorded document of the event. Tamura has an eclectic and left-of-center background similar to Haino's, which includes an interest in folk and ethnic musics (cf. Haino's recordings on hurdy gurdy) as well as outre sounds. 

I will admit that in my dotage, I find unremitting intensity difficult to listen to when separated from the energy exchange between performer and listener that takes place and is palpable in live performance. Haino has always been influenced by the Japanese concept of Ma, or the space between the notes. In his maturity, he seems to have embraced this aesthetic more fully, and now his music inhabits a sacred or ritual space. With an experienced improviser and empathetic partner like Tamura to play off, he spins a web of sound that is alternately turbulent and darkly seductive.

In this context, Haino is revealed as a consummate improviser, listening actively and using lots of negative space in between his savage guitar assaults and explosive vocal interjections. Tamura responds with the full expressive range of the trumpet: burnished tones on the open horn, voice-like muted cries and blues-drenched contemplative moments. He uses small instruments -- kitchen implements and squeaky toys -- to add variety and interject occasional humor into the sonic stew. Their conversation winds its way through several episodes. A highly satisfying set, and a good place to go when I want to experience Haino in full flight.