HAINO, KEIJI & REINHOLD FRIEDL - TRULY, SLIGHTLY, OVERFLOWING, WHEREABOUT OF GOOD WILL (CD)

"'For over four decades, the legendary guitarist, improvisor and Fushitsucha leader has reinvented songforms, sought out unlikely collaborations, and held nothing back in his continuing quest to reach music's furthest extremes' [The Wire Magazine]. The collaboration of the dark magus of the rock underground with pianist, composer and zeitkratzer mastermind Reinhold Friedl is not as unlikely as it might seem at first glance. Keiji Haino and Friedl have been working together for more than a decade with Friedl's zeitkratzer ensemble, released several albums, including Stockhausen's From the Seven Days, and played concerts in Germany, Poland and Japan. Here the two avant-garde musicians - known for their openness and musical radicalism - present themselves in an intimate setting: piano and voice, recorded in Berlin. In 'truly, slightly, overflowing, whereabout of good' will the piano takes on the role of an entire orchestra, accompanying and contrasting Haino's lucent vocal inscriptions with complex spatial sounds and noises. Intense, intimate, serious and colorful, the album begins with a metamorphosis of Billy Holiday's and Nina Simone's brutal classic 'strange fruits', featuring Haino's unique vocal techniques and his 'singular, unwavering vision of what music can be'. Friedl's distinctive piano sound, based on decades of research into new playing techniques, transforms the classical instrument into something more akin to an orchestra." (label info)