by Skip Jansen
After decades as an underground figure in Japanese experimental, avant-garde, noise, and free improvisation, guitarist and vocalist Keiji Haino strangely released a series of albums on a major label. While he had been a giant of the underground, recording for PSF and John Zorn's Tzadik and going for a brief interval to Tokuma, this may have been a way to get his music across to a larger audience in Japan. Evidently, the dark magus of guitar noise was certainly not toning down his improvised rituals, and in keeping with his mercurial spirit, he recorded this stunning collection of guitar eruptions and feedback tendrils that are some of best exorcisms on record. Like many of his solo recordings, what seems like chaos at first reveals a cyclical logic that relates simultaneously to the free jazz of Cecil Taylor and the psychedelic rock of Blue Cheer, yet is made with a such a singular focus as to go beyond comparison. Another astonishing album by one of Japan's most singular and extraordinary avant-garde artists.