Available
at PSF
| Fushitsusha - (Untitled, aka PSF 3/4) |
| Japanese
psychedelia is one of the country's defining musical modes for Western
fans. Flower Travellin' Band, Acid Mothers Temple, The Boredoms, Les
Rallizes Dénudés, Far East Family Band...the list goes on. While it may
not apply in every single case, there is a fairly unified sense of
extremity in Japanese psych, a willingness to blow speakers as well as
minds, to go so far out you may never come back. Some of it goes to
such exaggerated lengths that many listeners...even the more seasoned
ones...might ask themselves: why would anyone listen to this? Thing is, that's the wrong question. The issue here is not why someone would listen to this music, but what would compel someone to make it? Music is about communication, not fulfilling expectations, and when you're presented with a vision as extreme as the one found on Fushitsusha's debut album, careful listeners can't help but wonder what lies behind it. Making music isn't easy, and that goes double for anyone working the Tokyo underground, a task that can be dispiriting and prohibitively expensive in equal measure. In that climate, what would drive anyone to such demented artistic territory? It's that final question, for me, that strikes at the heart of Keiji Haino's work, including his psych rock project, Fushitsusha. This isn't music made for entertainment, it's music made by someone who is compelled to create, and it's by exploring that mystique that Fushitsusha's work takes on an unfathomable depth, a spine chilling sincerity that makes questions of accessibility irrelevant. Ask that question...ask "why?"...and what, at first glance, might seem like mere noise reveals itself to be an unflinching study of inner space, a dangerous, thrilling, often intimidating musical territory that is too harsh to enter, but too fascinating to ignore. Fushitsusha's world is not an easy one, but that doesn't mean it is without beauty. This untitled double live album consists of eight similarly untitled tracks that come from a completely alien, yet painfully human place, one that harbors a contemplative melancholy within its severe exterior. Disc one, track three is quietly shattered: mournful, ghostly vocals softly float through a mysterious, hazy scene, gently leading the listener to a soaring, wounded guitar solo that is in turns noble and frightening as it spirals towards the Heavens. The third track on the second disc, in contrast, starts off in similar territory, only to disintegrate and fragment into tortured shards, a confused psychedelic stew of whirlwind sonics and bottomless depths. That's but one of many moments of darkness. Track four, disc one is like a formless, psychedelic sit around a dying campfire, with floating harmonica, spectral vocals, and an atmosphere of quiet anticipation that gradually builds into a pained, lumbering peak. The album kicks off with a lurching, phantasmagoric blues riff, atonally limping along like a broken animal. Think The Birthday Party's "King Ink," but without the distancing layer of storytelling. This isn't explaining spiritual crisis, it is spiritual crisis, darkness and confusion incarnate. Disc two, track two is outright deranged, its mutated "Foxy Lady" riff brutalized to the point of near abstraction. It steadfastly refuses to build momentum, stubbornly clinging to its violent, not quite random ejaculations of sound in ways that are difficult to wrap your brain around. What drives someone to put so much passion into such inhospitable forms? Although they inhabit vaguely similar territory (dark psychedelia, drenched in mystery and feedback,) in many ways, Fushitsusha is the polar opposite of Les Rallizes Dénudés. Where LRD took what were, at their heart, pop songs, and dressed them up in white hot shards of guitar mayhem, Fushitsusha is not about verses and choruses. These eight tracks don't have parts so much as moments, musical ideas that are presented and allowed to expand organically, creating situations, not songs. Rather than surrendering to a maelstrom of fuzz, the focus here is almost painfully sharp, lending a gravitas to every movement, every note. Fushitsusha is clear eyed, focused, stark, and direct. It should come as no surprise that Fushitsusha (and Haino) have a followers that resemble disciples more than fans, people who view his work as a self contained universe, not as individual songs or statements. As such, it won't do to say any one album is the "good one," as each release is simply drawing back the curtain on another aspect of a fascinating...and fascinatingly inscrutable...whole. But you have to start somewhere, so we're recommending this untitled, double live album as the starting point for historical reasons. PSF Records founder Hideo Ikeezumi marks Fushitsusha as the beginning of truly Japanese psychedelia, the first band that took the form from being an influence into becoming wholly digested within a Japanese aesthetic. This album is their first release, the first recorded taste of what has become a uniquely defining element of modern Japanese music. Essential. |