Oren Ambarchi

The yearly summit of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi continues with Imikuzushi, which finds the group extending the power-trio strategies of last year’s highly praised In a flash everything comes together as one there is no need for a subject (BT05) and bringing to them a newly sustained intensity. For this performance, Haino limits himself to electric guitar and vocals, forming complex networks of slashing rhythm work, noise squall and chromatic shredding, moving at times to near-silent passages of howled vocals and isolated, hanging guitar strums. The tendency towards driving free-rock which surfaced on moments of the trio’s last release is cemented here, with O’Rourke’s fuzzed-out, non-linear bass riffing moving the music into almost garage-rock areas, combining with Ambarchi’s drums to form a bedrock of hypnotic, metronomic pounding which transforms itself effortlessly into passages of flowing free-time.

Like all of Haino’s best work, the trio transcends any ‘rock’ genre exercise to enter a non-idiomatic zone of ritual intensity, creating a music formed purely out of instrumental and group-mind possibility. Presented as four unedited excerpts salvaged from an epic show that lasted well over three hours, the sometimes raw nature of the recording only adds to its directness and harshly emotive quality.

Tracklist

1.	Still Unable To Throw Off That Teaching A Heart Left Abandoned Unable To Get Inside That Empty Space Nerves Freezing That Unconcealed Sadness?	13:45

2.	Ready And Waiting Ready And Tired Of Waiting This Happiness Hovers For A While Opaque..	16:56

3.	Invited In Practically Drawn In By Something Facing The Exit Of This Hiding Place Who Is It? That Went In..	22:29

4.	Acute Sensitivity Is Not Simply A "Madness" An Acute Sensitivity To The Resonance Of "I Love You" Teaches Us Just A Little Something It's Not That We Can't Do Something It's Just That We Haven't Done It Yet...	17:57

Credits

released February 27, 2012

Keiji Haino - guitar, vocals
Jim O'Rourke - bass
Oren Ambarchi - drums

Recorded live January 6, 2011 at SuperDeluxe, Tokyo by Masahide Ando
Concert produced by Mike Kubeck
Mixed by Joe Talia & Oren Ambarchi at Chinatown, Melbourne
Mastered by Rashad Becker

Cover image by Shunichiro Okada
Design by Stephen O'Malley

Thanks: Mike Kubeck, Akiko Miyake, Shunichiro Okada, crys cole, Eiko Ishibashi, Dan Satou, Soma, Keiko Higuchi, Francis Plagne, Joe Talia and all at SuperDeluxe.

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