Keiji Haino & Jun Morita - S/T

2025

Awesome Duo Recording!

This is a valuable record of dialogue between two musicians who have been thinking about the origin and harmony of the world.
Keiji Haino has been a singer for more than half a century from the 1970s to the present, and as a singer, he has been playing guitar, various percussion instruments, ethnic instruments, electronic devices, etc. As a result, he has published a huge number of recordings. The sound style and form of performance are surprisingly diverse, but what is consistent is that he has only looked at one point of “the origin of music”. No matter what instrument you use, no matter what the circumstances you play, the moment the first time the music is born shines, and we can confirm the free breathing and transformation of the music. The music of Haino always rises from a state of upswing, and never traces the past.

On the other hand, Jun Morita, who is known as a popular DJ, has been focusing on activities as a performer / composer mainly using modular synthesizers for about ten years. He is obsessed with modular synths because he can handcraft unknown sounds beyond theory and imagination from scratch. Morita is also an explorer who looks at the origin of music. Morita, who knew Haino at a live event about eight years ago, proposed to produce a collaborative CD, and this work was recorded in 2018. There are six songs here, but the production procedure is different for the first song "I" and the second song "II" and the second song "II". "I" was written by Morita in advance with a modular sound from Central Asia to the Middle East, which was pre-made by Morita, with an improvised voice, but the five songs under "II" were first recorded by Haino's solo performance (voice, guitar, Harmonium, and Polygonola), and Morita fleshed them with modular synths and electric violins ("VI" pichickers) and completed. The polygonola used in "II" is a bronze percussion of various shapes (circles, squares, triangles, etc.) devised by plant physiologist Naoki Sakurai, but as an instrument that produces sounds and harmony that cannot be captured by Western-style music theory and concepts, Haino has been used for a long time. In addition to this, not only this, in both songs, the performance of Haino is exquisite and exquisite, but Morita's sound production that carefully adheres to its subtlety and carefully adheres to the individuality of the harmony and the development of harmony is also wonderful.

In terms of recording work that is not a single-shot live work, but it can be said that it is a valuable piece in Haino's career in terms of recording work that is carefully carved.
Shinya Matsuyama (music critic)