New Waves of Noise in the 1980S and 1990S: EYE, Haino, Otomo, Yoshimio
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tus (mined from the collection of Black Editions label chief resists categorization that his existential confrontations Peter Kolovos) revealed the unique artwork and small-scale with meaning and representation have become an essential New Waves of Noise in craf productions of Japanese independent music labels. At part of his worldview. On his website, a few sentences of Zebulon in LA’s Frogtown, Haino mesmerized a sold-out poetry blurrily foat on a black page: “with/the unwilling- audience with his droning, harsh, electrifed hurdy-gurdy ness to know/coexists/the unwillingness to be known/so/ solo; a week later, Otomo conjured noise, feedback, songs, the refusal to know/accelerates/the gap in the black luster.”3 the 1980s and 1990s: EYE, and cut-up samples from his turntables and electric gui- tar, followed by YoshimiO’s vocal acrobatics set against But Haino’s career, as iconoclastic as it has been, also the raga-infected compositions of sitarist Daikiti Yoshida carves a trace around the broad infuences of the Japa- Haino, Otomo, YoshimiO and drummer Hamamoto Motoyuki in SAICOBAB. nese underground in the 1980s and 1990s, subtly revealing the borders of its political and aesthetic formations. As Each of these performers amplifes a sound world uncon- a teenager in the 1960s, Haino was inspired by Japanese by David Novak tained by genres, generations, schools, or scenes. Together, underground theater and the work of Antonin Artaud, they have generated a resonant subversion that has pushed but a fascination with The Doors’ Jim Morrison led him against the boundaries of art and music from the 1980s to self-taught guitar and vocal improvisation. His earliest until the present. Their inclusion in the Parergon exhibition recorded performance, with the free-jazz-inspired group contributes to a critical art history that Lost Aaraaf, took place in August 1971 recognizes music, noise, and sound as at the legendary Sanritsuka Genyasai Japan’s millennial pop culture boom was extraordinarily noise collage to guitar solos to flm scores, and improvised part of a radical moment of cosmopol- festival, at which lefist activists, local productive for a new generation of visual and conceptu- turntable collaborations with Christian Marclay, EYE, itan globalist intervention in the 1980s farmers, and underground musicians al artists, building over decades into a global reception Sachiko M, and Bob Ostertag. At the same time, Haino and 1990s. Digging into this historical joined forces in a three-day bacchanal to of postmodernist Japan, imagined through the super- Keiji slowly and almost singlehandedly inspired an moment of discovery, one discovers protest the controversial expansion of the fat world of Murakami Takeshi, and expanded by Nara international cult around the Tokyo-based P.S.F. label that a deeper and more diverse history of Narita International Airport. But even in Yoshitomo, Mori Mariko, Yanobe Kenji, and others. The released his solo recordings and group collaborations. experimentation, emerging from under- this edgy context, with a lineup including 1980s and 1990s were also a crucial time for contemporane- ground music scenes in Tokyo and Osaka such radical acts as Zuno Keisatsu (Brain ous innovations in music and sound, jumpstarting a slow While this enthusiastic overseas reception provoked rooted in messier forms of improvisation, Police) and Takayanagi Masayuki’s New but steadily growing reception of Japanese “noise” (some- Japanese attention to the local music underground psychedelic guitar rock, Butoh, free jazz, Direction, nineteen-year-old Haino’s times, and controversially, as “Japanoise”) by global audi- in Osaka and Tokyo (a phenomenon known as gyaku- and radical physical performance tracing noisy guitar and antagonistic death ences in the following decades. The arc of this sonic history yunyu, or reverse importation), the difculty of acquiring back to the links between anti-art, under- threats shocked the audience, who threw has only just begun to be followed, bringing attention to recordings in the analog mediascape kept the scene deeply ground theater, and experimental music stones at the band and eventually forced rich developments in improvisation, technological experi- submerged for decades. In my book, Japanoise: Music at the in the 1960s and 1970s. Below are brief Keiji Haino, Watashi Dake them of the stage. mentation, sound art, and underground music. Narratives Edge of Circulation, I argued that the special circumstances sketches for each artist, to hint at how of Japanese popular music in the 1980s typically focused on of this pre-internet media circulation formed loops of their careers refect a unique confuence of cultural and Following this infamous debut, Haino retreated into pri- the heavily produced electronic city pop of Yellow Magic cultural feedback between North America and Japan, aesthetic infuences that challenges contemporary aesthetic vate experiments and did not return to public performance Orchestra, or the glitzy idol pop of Seiko Matsuda et al., as which were mystifed by transnational disjunctures, delays, divisions of image, music, sound, and performance. until 1979, with the introduction of his new experimental divergent poles in a New Wave zeitgeist of techno-Japanese and distortions, but also fostered a productive cycle of rock group Fushitsusha, at the infuential Kichijoji cofee- newness, superfciality, and appropriation that was at once mutual infuence that has continued for decades.2 Equally HAINO KEIJI: SUMMONING house Minor. Although the tiny space existed for less than naive and cynical. It was at the fringes of this global uptake important in pushing the Japanoise scene to the forefront NOTHINGNESS INTO SOUND three years, Minor had a deep and lasting impact inspiring that another kind of sound came into earshot, refecting of global attention was an intensely embodied and sonically many of the improvisational, electronic, and punk groups the more cacophonous and dissonant echoes of Japan’s overwhelming performance style that skirted the edges of Over the past three decades, Haino Keiji has gradually that later emerged in the Tokyo underground. Afer Minor post-bubble moment. performance art, danger music, Butoh, and endurance art become an iconic fgure of the Japanese underground, closed in 1980, Haino retreated into illness and isolation, in a series of legendary punk rock and political happenings known for his compelling performances on guitar, per- but not before releasing his frst recording, the intensely Beginning in the mid-1980s, “cool Japan” crashed into in Osaka during the 1980s and 1990s. cussion, electronics, and hurdy- noisy Watashi Dake? (“Just Me?”).4 The LP, like the West in a postmodernist bricolage of manga and gurdy—having recorded over 170 3. Fushitsusha website, accessed August 22, many of Haino’s recordings to come, was issued anime, Harajuku kawaii, Akihabara otaku, and Shibuya- At the Parergon exhibition, it was the integration of vital albums over his prolifc career 2019, http://www.fushitsusha.com/en/black. in an almost pitch-black cover, featuring only Gin kei pop grooves. But on more subterranean channels, live performances by EYE, Haino, Otomo, and SAICOBAB (solo, in collaborations, and in html. Satoh’s inky portrait on its face and a barely legi- a much noisier new wave—fronted by Otomo Yoshihide’s that introduced the dynamism of Japan’s underground groups like Fushitsusha, Niji- 4. The album was released on Minor owner ble list of obscure titles on the back. Haino reports genre-busting group Ground Zero, Haino Keiji’s intense music to Los Angeles in 2019, demonstrating the pow- umu, Aihiyo, Vajra, Senhedrin, Sato’s nascent label Pinakotheca in 1981, and that the album was recorded in total darkness. “I trio Fushitsusha, and the breakout art-noise mania of erful overlaps between art, sound, noise, and music. At Seijaku, and Nazoranai)—and reissued to great acclaim by LA-based Black wanted to have to grope blindly on the guitar to Editions in 2017. Haino Keji, Watashi Dake?, Boredoms—streamed out in a fow of innovative recordings Blum & Poe, EYE hunched among a packed crowd, wires for the mysterious aura of his Pinakotheca, 1981, vinyl LP. fnd each individual sound,” he recalls. “I wanted representing a surprisingly extreme sound of underground strapped to his gloved hands: Those immersed in the crush challenging sounds and obscure to create the music from a place of absolute noth- Japan. The early local releases of Boredoms on Osaka felt the wild dynamism of EYE’s sudden and spectacu- lyrics. Steeped in an occult ap- 5. Haino, Keiji. “Like an Anthithetical Keiji ingness.”5 The recording, dominated by distorted Haino: A Conversation with Keiji Haino on labels Public Bath and Japan Overseas, as well as EYE and lar gestures and shouts, mapped onto a shower of noise. proach to sonic practice, Haino his early years and Watashi Dake?,” interview vocals, feedback, and deeply noisy silences, ofered YoshimiO’s many side projects, had triggered a string of Upstairs, a solid wall of Gin Satoh’s stark black-and-white has always cut an intimidating by Takeshi Goda, trans. Alan Cummings, up a world of total sonic abstraction that was releases on major labels, many featuring EYE’s photography documented the fgure as a countercultural icon Black Editions Group, January 29, 2017, http:// emotionally intense while remaining distant and 1 1. EYE was also commissioned to produce www.blackeditionsgroup.com/antithetical- stunning psychedelic artwork. By the early 1990s, the artwork for Beck, Midnite Vultures, Gefen, jittery energy of Japan’s 1980s and anti-hippie spiritualist, interview-haino. Haino expands on his personal impenetrable. EYE was touring with John Zorn’s Naked City 1999, compact disc. punk and hardcore scene, cen- caped and cloaked in a curtain iconography of nothingness in another recent ensemble and Boredoms played Lollapalooza tered on his now-legendary pho- of black—now silver—hair, his interview: “Have you seen the kanji for Haino? The 1990s brought Haino into contact with an 2.