Concert review: Keiji Haino @ Johnny Brenda's
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
via Wikipedia
For all the talk of Keiji Haino's guitar prowess it was at least 20 minutes before the 62-year-old experimental musician picked up the instrument. Hidden behind waist-length white hair and sunglasses, Haino rolled a metal ball in a bowl that was miked in a way that it sounded like a swarm of bees, violently shaking the newfangled instrument until he tired of it. Then came a metal ribbon that he cracked like a whip, which caused a terrifying noise, as if the sky was being torn apart. Could Haino's auditory assault get any worse? The answer came in the form of a violin bow that he rubbed along the metal, producing nails-on-blackboard discomfort. Before the show, I had wondered why Japan's national broadcaster NHK banned him from its airwaves from 1973 to 2013. Now I knew.
Still, the sounds he wrestled from ordinary objects were pleasingly strange in a way that justified their harshness. Mesmerized, the crowd held its breath in awe when Haino proceeded to play a slinky, yes, a slinky. When he stretched the spring, it sounded like a chasm had suddenly opened and the void might suck everyone in. The kid's toy then became a percussion instrument, emitting a resounding boom each time it was compressed.
After a brief pause — his compositions don't have a clear beginning or end — Haino picked up his guitar and made it drone and shriek and finally, when the crowd had been fully stupefied, only then did it sing a sweet melody, a brief respite from the dense layers of deafening noise that made its mark: My ears are still ringing almost 24 hours later.
