There are two people that frequently occupy this space of applying a kind of avant-garde lens to old standards, Keiji Haino and Diamanda Galás. Both very different singers and wildly different aesthetics, but there’s something fascinating about how they both revisit material to make it sound haunted as fuck.
So Haino and Reinhold Friedl‘s version of “Strange Fruit” here eschews most sense of meter and phrasing in favour of an enormously disembodied, melodically rootless mendacious whisper of the auld classic. If you’ve heard Patty Walters‘ version of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair”, then you probably know what I’m getting at. It also shares that quality with Galás of being very excellent, but I’m unlikely to put it on too frequently.
Friedl’s part in this is apparently piano, though it’s difficult to place much of what he’s doing as specifically pianistic — every now and then a wee hammered tone will arise, but by and large his piano preparations are closer to percussive preparations — clattering cymbals and metallic sounds. A suitable foil to Haino’s vocal extemporisations — clicks and growls and squeals — but it does mean that this is ont the side of Haino’s catalogue that’s more expressionistically foreboding. Perhaps closest to that avant-garde mainstay of “someone being possessed by feral rodents and having an epileptic fit in a warehouse full of metal shards”. One of the problems with Haino — and I’ve got a good twenty-five plus CDs to make this point with — is that he’ll do what he does regardless of the other player. Plenty of great players are like this, whether you look at your Miles Davises or your Peter Brötzmanns or even Prince. The problem comes when you get the wrong partner, so it’s worth saying that Friedl’s inexplicable piano (and honestly, I’d not guess this was a piano if I didn’t have the press release) is a formidable foil for Haino — he’s capable of switching tempo and textures at a second’s notice and able to consistently go blow for blow with Haino’s vocals.Every now and then a little light is let in — a wee melodic ghost tapping at the window towards the end of “Wild Harvest” — that just about holds this back from being a straight up textural / noise improv piece. But again, we are in the realm of quite dry and austere textural improvisations by and large and it’s never loud enough to tick the ‘noise’ box. Which is a pro for me but YMMV.
Last track “True, Slightly Fly” might well be the more accessible of the three tracks, but it’s also twenty-three minutes long, many of which are Haino all full-throated. It has something of a harmonic presence and there’s elements of drones against vocals. For a time it nestles up against something you might describe as delicate and beguiling, but it’s a frequent contrast with more guttural sounds.Where this sits in either discography — I don’t think there’s much here that’ll surprise fans of Zeitkratzer or Haino, but I doubt anyone was expecting a polka best-of. Truly, Slightly, Overflowing, Whereabout Of Good Will is a darkly foreboding and quite a tough listen, but it’s oddly charming throughout. There’s a lot of careful weighting to contributions and a good amount of careful listening and pivoting — so far as musicianship goes it’s a grand exemplar of a certain trend in often-quiet texture-based improvisation. Haino is a terrifying vocalist so having a whole set where he can go off vocally is a treat.
Probably one for headphones and late at night, but I’d probably not recommend hallucinogens unless you’re fond of all the shadows becoming malevolent insects.-Kev Nickells-
