"Japan's rocker/free improv musician (since 1970s) Keiji Haino appears on WPS1 for the first time, with an ad-hoc group, Mitochondria Quartet, with 4 young musicians on strings. Haino is active around the world, often at NYC's Tonic and other cosmopolitan music scenes. He is also known for being omnivorous in terms of the instruments he plays and collects, including his own voice and body. He is skinny, very long-haired, in black clothes head to toe, and wearing dark glasses all the time. In this public gig with younger musicians, he started by playing cymbals and drums, and in the latter joint session he provoked them with hyper energy as well as with vocalization and guitar playing. Mitochondria Quartet (nothing to do with Ellington's Alexandra Quartet), Takuya Takahashi, guitar and percussion Jun Kawasaki, bass Takashi Ueno, sax, misc. Ryuichi Daijo, guitar. (29 minutes)" Listen here (Edition #20)
bigomagazine.com: "Haino is the name to follow in underground circles in Japan. Notorious for the noise he makes on his guitars, this short 45-min set has him with Coil stripping the blues to the bone. You’ve never heard these blues standards played like this before."
allmusic.com: "When attempting to describe what Keiji Haino does to a guitar, the verb "play" seems terribly insufficient. Mauling might be a more appropriate choice, maybe even destroying. Whatever, whether it is as a solo performer or leading his tremendous trio Fushitsusha, Haino has been leading the loud, free form, noise-loaded, jazz/rock guitar movement in Japan for nearly three decades, starting with seminal noise-jazz/rockers Lost Aaraaff in 1971." More
Tanakh is the name for music written and improvised by a collective of musicians; music that is focused towards beauty and experimentation within structure instead of towards a particular musical genre or style. In the last five years this revolving collective has included a large number of musicians headed up by principle songwriter Jesse Poe. Although currently residing in Florence, Italy, Poe comes from a background of American rural music. His great-grandfather wrote country ballads and his great aunts and uncle had a live radio program broadcast out of Indiana. More