Artist: Keiji Haino
Album: Black Blues (Violent Version)
Genre: Avant-Garde, Experimental, Noise
Label: Les Disques Du Soleil Et De L'Acier
Released: 2004
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Black Petal (5:35)
- Black Eyes (9:18)
- Town In Black Fog (10:47)
- I Don't Want To Know (4:17)
- Drifting (13:14)
- See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (9:52)
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On this cover, Keiji Haino faces right and everything changes -- and if you don't know what this is about, please first read the review of Black Blues (Acoustic). The guitar is still plugged, but now it also sounds plugged, with distortion, and a lot more idiomatic gestures from Haino -- strumming gets jagged at times, with occasional hastily improvised moments, and an overall noisier approach. But the biggest difference resides in the vocal delivery. Whereas his singing on the unplugged Black Blues is extremely quiet and melancholic, here it is shrieking loud and utterly desperate, with signal overload aplenty. The ghost has turned into a banshee. Haino goes through the same six blues covers, but he renews his approach from top to bottom, something evidenced by the significant variations in duration between both albums. For instance, the six-minute unplugged "Town in Black Frog" [sic] lasts close to 11 minutes here. "Black Eyes," 15 minutes when sung quietly, is rounded up in nine. If the songs were quite difficult to recognize before, here they are completely transmogrified. Nothing remains of Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" when Haino starts wailing. By cramming too much feeling in the melodies, too much pain and suffering, Haino obliterates their original directness, turning them into something physically disturbing -- worthwhile by and of itself, but with no discernible relation to the originals. Call it "extreme blues," if you will. Or better yet, call it "Keiji Haino." Even though the acoustic and electric versions of Black Blues are sold separately, they are obviously meant to go together, as two sides of the same unpredictable coin.
review by Francois Couture