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Fushitsusha

There I was, in my favorite music store in Montreal asking for something new in the same vein as whatever krautrock band I was into at the time. I was looking for something loud and psychedelic, old or new. "Well you probably have some of the Fushitsusha recordings right?", the clerk said, thinking too much of me. When he noticed me frowning and getting that dumb look on my face, he lowered his eyes, ashamed. "You have to listen to these!!!", he then runs down an aisle in the store and comes back with two or three recordings he had in stock at the time. He then tells me this group is lead by the curious japanese lord of all things black: Keiji Haino. "Oh well I do know him!", I say, wiping the sweat off my brow even though I had never really listened to anything he had done at the time.

He hands me the CDs but puts on A Death Never To Be Complete in the store. It was unlike anything I had heard before, it was indeed very loud and the psychedelic touch was obviously there too! However, listening to it on speakers like this in a store doesn't do justice to the intensity of the music created by this group! I bought Death pretty much instantly, and the rest of the day was spent trying to find other albums by the group. I found the second volume of the live double albums in another store and even then I wanted more before I would sit down and listen to them, so I actually went back and bought the two other recordings I had passed on earlier that same day. And these were all import recordings, at import prices; it was expensive as fuck, but to this day, I don't regret my shopping spree. I even went ahead and ordered pretty much everything else they had made and which was available!

I did take time to actually listen to these and I still stand by my argument that this is headphone music, no matter how loud and aggressive the songs might be. On speakers, regardless of how loud you put it, the menacing sounds have a tendency to lose their edge and wander elsewhere; on headphones however, there is no escape. The sounds are imposing and they will cause you to break a sweat even during the more ambient tracks. And no other band in history has ever used the idea of using the same exact cover art with such great success. It's simple, cryptic and the constant black color could not be more fitting of the music found within! I have yet to deepen my knowledge of Haino's solo work, but in and of itself, Fushitsusha is sufficient for anyone who, like me, wishes to look beyond the whole krautrock scene and hear how far it all can go.

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