Fushitsusha

This interview originally appeared in Japanese in the second issue of G-Modern, PSF's in-house "Psychedelic, Avant-garde, Underground" magazine. It has since been reprinted in English in the third issue of the New Zealand magazine Opprobrium. The interview was translated by Alan Cummings. Thanks to Alan and Nick Cain, the editor of Opprobrium, for allowing the interview to be presented here.

Yasushi Ozawa¹ - Bass
Jun Kosugi - Drums
Maki Miura² - Guitar

Interview text by: Koichiro Sakamoto & Masakazu Nakajima

As this is the first interview you've done as a band, first I'd like to ask you a bit about yourselves. Starting from Miura, is Fushitsusha the first band you've been in?

Miura Before joining Fushitsusha I was in a band called MTK with Akui³ and another bassist and a pianist for five or six years. Then I also played guitar on that Okami no Jikan track on Tokyo Flashback 2.⁴

Then you were in Katsurei, and now you play guitar for Shizuka, right? I think there must be a lot of difference between Katsurei and Fushitsusha. Fushitsusha don't really seem to suit heavily structured tunes-it sounds like you just make up the arrangements as you go along.

Miura I wouldn't really say that we don't suit structured stuff .

In that respect, was it difficult for you?

Miura There are inevitably going to be difficulties-it would be boring if there weren't. With Katsurei, we would take hours in the studio to decide where every last drum roll was going to fit in. With Fushitsusha, we put a lot more into the arrangements than everyone probably thinks. But when we play live, we hardly ever duplicate what we do in the studio. I mean, when you play somewhere the acoustics are different and we have different ways to make the most of a particular venue. So the arrangements change minute by minute when we play. Sure, it's difficult but once you become able to enjoy it, then things enter a whole new level. (laughs)

When did you first start to play with Fushitsusha? Around '88?

Miura No, I'd been playing in the studio for a lot before that, but it was probably around then that I first played live with the band. I was originally an improvisation specialist, but with Fushitsusha, the difference was too great for me. If you take it that what Fushitsusha does is improvisation, then there isn't another rock band like it anywhere. That's how different it is. I more or less understood on a sensory level, but it felt like my body and mind were being taught how to think. I became able to sympathize with what Haino-san is trying to do, and there is a lot of common-ground in our pre-music sensibility. It felt like Haino-san had already discovered mystical, unknown things that I too was interested in. So I practiced for an unbelievably long time, but it was fun at the same time. I reckon I must have just practiced for about a year. (laughs) And the next thing I knew I was playing on-stage with the band. Now I come to think about it, the A and C sides of that Fushitsusha double LP are taken from the first show I played with them.

Ozawa There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that no one ever sees. That all takes a long time. There've been times when the drummer has changed several times in those intervals. (laughs)

How did you come to join Fushitsusha in the first place?

Miura The first time I saw Fushitsusha play live, I had this feeling that one day I would come to know Haino-san better. Simply because we look alike. (laughs) Only joking. It's something I can't really put into words, but the songs seemed to soak into my body-it was too cool. Then I thought that I had to video a gig, so I asked and got permission. Haino-san saw the video and said that there our aesthetic sensibility had some points in common, or something along those lines, I don't remember exactly. So he asked me if I would come along on the next tour to video the shows, and there was no way I could turn him down. I was really interested in what he was doing, and wanted to get to know him. And that was that.

Next is Kosugi-san. You were in a band called Dendo Purin⁵, weren't you?

Kosugi The band is still on-going.

Is that a totally different type of music to what you do with Fushitsusha?

Kosugi When people see it they probably think it's totally different, but to me it's not that much different. Umm, in terms of theory it's different but the way the music is put together is the same. Our aim in Dendo Purin is to fuck things up, not really to give out energy though. There are hardly any bands around now who have real impact, are there? Before I joined Fushitsusha I had always wanted to make something interesting, and that's why I joined, or rather they let me join. I had just started playing the drums and hardly had any technique at all, I thought it was enough if I could just make noise.

How did you come to join Fushitsusha?

Kosugi The first time I saw Haino-san was at a show he did with Kan Mikami⁶ at Kataashi Kutsuya. That was the first time I had seen him, and I had been completely unaware of him up till then. But when I saw him play, I thought that he was doing something way above my fucking up. . . .

Ozawa Really fucking it up. (laughs)

Kosugi Mikami-san is amazing too though-like I can feel it on my skin. I thought I would invite him to my college festival but things didn't work out and we postponed it till the next year. I also got him to play at the Komabasai festival⁷. Round about then there was a time when Fushitsusha didn't play for six months or so, but I went to see Haino-san every time he played solo, two or three times a month. And gradually we started talking to each other. Then sometime around the Komabasai festival, I forget when exactly, and we were on a train and Haino-san said "It's really sudden and you're probably going to be surprised, but would you drum with Fushitsusha?"

Was it totally unexpected or had you had some premonition?

Kosugi None at all. I mean Haino-san had never seen me play, though I think he had heard of the band. That was in November two years ago (1990). Then at the start of the next year, Haino-san and Ozawa-san came to see me play. Just the two of them enshrined at the back, (laughs) I was really scared.

Ozawa Haino-san had said to me that there was someone who he wanted to play drums with us, and wouldn't I go and have a look. So that was the first time I heard you too.

Kosugi I was really tense so things got even more fucked up than usual. And afterwards we talked and then I went along to the rehearsal studio with them and jammed a bit.

When was that?

Kosugi Around the start of 1990. And so I said to Haino-san, "Why are you asking me?" He must know stacks of good drummers with sense and technique, and he hadn't even heard me play then. Haino-san said to me, "Recently you've come to see me every time I've played solo, and that makes you the kind of person who can sympathize with Fushitsusha. So that qualifies you to play, and besides, out of all the drummers I know you're the one I would like to play the most". Or something along those lines. I was so happy when he said that.

So you agreed on the spot?

Kosugi Yeah. I hadn't thought at all about how difficult it would be. (laughs)

What way do Fushitsusha rehearsals work?

Kosugi Recently we hardly rehearse at all. Usually just three times a week for two or three weeks before we play live. But when I joined we continued at that pace for about three months.

How long does each rehearsal last?

Kosugi About three hours.

Is it mainly the same kind of stuff as you do live?

Kosugi No.

Ozawa The stuff we do in the studio, we don't do live. (laughs)

So what do you do?

Kosugi Anything really. At the start we didn't have any tunes at all, we just mainly jammed.

Ozawa Haino-san sort of builds up a curriculum for you.

Kosugi I thought that Haino-san used a free-jazz-style method. A lot of people probably think that. But it's not at all. He really hates the word improvisation.

But he says himself that what he is doing is the first introduction of jazz methodology to rock, doesn't he?

Miura That's just a part of it.

Ozawa He hates so-called Japanese free-jazz artists.

Miura You're getting mixed up because you're thinking that jazz equals free jazz. An easy to understand example would be the late-period Art Pepper Band. The relationship between the four of them is so strong, it's like they come together with a sense of timing that is so precise your nerves will snap. At that moment they are capable of doing anything, going anywhere. That's what improvisation is, and in that respect rock is half-hearted. Even if you set aside the aspects of technique, the rock "consciousness" doesn't extend that far. . .

Ozawa What he means is that what we are doing, and what is normally referred to as improvisation, are two different things. We aren't so-called "improvisers".

Kosugi If you just play by yourself Haino-san gets angry and asks why you aren't listening to the other sounds.

If there are four of you, then you've got to play as one unit.

Ozawa But not in the kind of relationship where you just adhere together. Each member's differences in sense and so on clearly come out and conversely bind it all together even more tightly. In some respects there hasn't been anything like this up until now. There have been a few groups who can fire off together along the same line, but we've gone beyond that-that's too boring.

By boring do you mean that it's boring if, up to a certain point, you don't control the speed and the linkages and so on?

Kosugi The linkages between the four of us are important, but basically it is very simple: the drums beat out a certain rhythm, and then the bass locks into that. But because the music builds up into waves, you need technique. Haino-san has taught me a lot of things that on first hearing sounded impossible.

You just mentioned the word technique, but what do you mean by that?

Kosugi I don't mean being able to move your hands quickly or stuff like that. More like, feelings and being able to combine expressiveness with force . . . Haino-san used to talk to me a lot about breathing.

What exactly do you mean by breathing?

Kosugi At the start he used to say that I had no control, and in order to build that control I had to take much longer breaths.

Was that something that you had brought with you to Fushitsusha wholesale from Dendo Purin?

Kosugi That was the only way I knew how to play: with short breaths and hardly any movement at all, so when I hit the drums everything would fracture. Haino-san was always telling not just to stop there when I hit the drums, to follow through on the stroke.

Before Dendo Purin, were you in any other bands?

Kosugi No, that was the first time I started playing out.

You said earlier that the point of Dendo Purin was to fuck things up. . .

Kosugi At that time, the scene was really boring-it still hasn't changed much. My life was centered around music and in that sense there was no one that I could get into. There was no one playing what I would call "music". There were a lot of people who would practice a stack and would be really proficient at playing fusion and so on, but it was more like a job to them. There was no sense that they were really attacking the music. Then there was Haino-san, who wasn't doing anything half-heartedly and you could see it in his face when he played that he wasn't having an easy time of it. You look at his hands and he's really going for it. (laughs) I didn't understand but I thought there was something more to it. It's a contradiction, but while we have fixed practices and lots of rules, when we actually play live there's a real feeling of freedom. Haino-san himself is always saying that it's not the audience who most enjoys Fushitsusha's music but the band themselves.

When Fushitsusha play live it usually lasts three or four hours. Are you conscious of it lasting a long time?

Kosugi When we play for three hours, there are times when it feels like we've played for a long time, but in general it always feels shorter than it actually is. It's strange that when I play with Dendo Purin after about forty minutes I am totally exhausted, but when I play with Fushitsusha for three hours I'm tired but it's easier. I don't know what it all means.⁸

Ozawa-san, you're next. Could you maybe start from the time of the East Bionic Symphony⁹?

Ozawa The East Bionic Symphony was never started with the intention of it's becoming a proper group. (Takehisa) Kosugi-san¹⁰ ran a music workshop for two years at an art school in Suidobashi, before Merce Cunningham invited him to America. We were his first class during those two years. It's pretty close to say that we intended to make a graduation album. Every week a crowd of us would go to Kosugi-san's home in Naka Meguro¹¹ and play. Sometimes we would just do breathing exercises and get drunk and that would be the end of it. (laughs) Everyone liked to drink, except me. They always started with shochu¹².

People always say that Kosugi-san was very tranquil.

Ozawa And so is Haino-san. (laughs) Up until the East Bionic Symphony and my meeting with Kosugi-san at art school, I had been really focussed upon improvised music as a mode of self-expression. At the time, I was listening to a lot free jazz. Kosugi-san had a different way of improvising-he said that you weren't just on your own, there are people around you. For him, it wasn't just a matter of making music-before anything else there was the movement of the body and the breathing, and then you had to listen to the sounds around you. He had a habit of saying "Relax more. Play more relaxed.", and wouldn't allow me to go on. He wouldn't tell you what to do, he'd just tell you that you should relax and listen to the sound around you. I learnt there that there is another way rather than just attacking in a straight line-take one step back and embrace your surroundings. That struck me as something that I hadn't thought of before. Everyone who went there probably came to realize that. Then one day we decided to call ourselves the East Bionic Symphony-I don't remember much of the details, but I recall playing at the art school and also in Kichijoji¹³. It was just like the class had continued over into a live situation. And then we made the Kojima record.

It doesn't say anywhere on that record that you played bass.

Ozawa That's because I didn't. A guy called C-san played bass, and I just blew into a saxophone mouthpiece.

There was just a big list of instruments and I didn't think that everyone stuck to one thing.

Ozawa No, you just played whatever instrument or thing that could make sound that you had lying around. We didn't deliberately go out and buy them specially. There was a guy who was a transmitter specialist, and someone on guitar, and then people doing the vocals-I think I might have sung as well. There is a gap between the A and B sides, isn't there? I was playing the mouthpiece in that gap, but it all got cut. (laughs) It was a load of trash really. I mean, we recorded it at school. But yeah, that was the very first thing I did.

How long did the East Bionic Symphony carry on?

Ozawa Until Kosugi-san went to America. I'm not sure what year, but we recorded the LP in the second year, and then he left about a year after that.

What did you do after that?

Ozawa Just the same as everyone else really-I was in and out of Minor in Kichijoji a lot. I had met Sato-san before he started Minor:¹⁴ I was involved in this 'zine called "Music" and that was how I met him. He said that he was planning to open an independent place called Minor, so I went along to check it out and ended up going regularly. There were all these various different groups of people who went to Minor at that time-there was Takeda Kenichi and his crowd, then there were the people from Meiji University and Nihon University, the Rockin' On crowd. It was all really mixed up. Then I started going regularly, almost once a month, to Meiji University.

Was that at the Meiji University Free Music Society?

Ozawa Yes. It was a real mixture, but they had a planning meeting once a month and got lots of people to play. There was even a group of kids who played once. (laughs) Anyway, there was this percussion/bass/guitar trio called Percussive Unity-nothing to do with that other Percussive Unity-who I had wanted to join. They had just lost their bassist and were looking for someone, so they said that if I played bass I could join. So I played with them for a bit. Then there were the people from Minor: I played with Tori (Kudo)'s¹⁵ band as well. We did a track that's on that "Aiyoku Jinmin Juji Gekijo" album. It was totally incompetent-this clattering thing called "Machine Gun Tango". (laughs) Then I played for about three shows in a band called Lapis, at least I think that's what they were called. After I left them I played solo, doing stuff a bit like Contortions (Friction). The time I played with Lapis was around the time that Minor finished. After that I took a break for a bit-not doing music or playing the bass or anything, it's all a bit foggy. Then I found this improvised music workshop thing that played once a month or so at Goodman in Ogikubo, so I went along to have a look. And I ended up playing with some of the members-the creme de la creme of the improvised workshop, as it were. (laughs) . Around that time I played a bit in the Yumiko Watanabe Trio with Igarashi-san on sax and Watanabe-san on piano. Then we got rid of Watanabe-san-it was that kind of a band. (laughs) And after that I played with Igarashi-san under the name of FLUX-we still play occasionally at Goodman. That's all I've done outside of Fushitsusha up until now. To go back a bit, I met Haino-san around the time I was active in the Meiji Univ. Free Music Society-or rather, we got him to play. The Free Music Society had just got a PA so I was doing that, so I reckon that he definitely saw me play once around that time. It was a duet with a sax player called Miura-san, I think. At that time we all went to play at a live house in Machida called Karafinka-so I think that was the first time that Haino-san heard me play. A little bit after that, when I was doing the PA by myself for various people, Haino-san got in contact with me and said he was putting a band together. If I think about it now, that band was Fushitsusha, and he wanted me to play bass. But that was just when I was busiest doing PA stuff like the Yuming¹⁶ tour and so on, so I had to refuse. So he got (Jun) Hamano and (Toshiharu) Osato to play instead. Though I don't know much about that period. So I turned him down because I was busy, and then he asked me again. I think it was about the time when Fushitsusha took a long break-he asked me to come and jam with them if I had the time. So I went along and it turned out to be an audition-I had been trapped. (laughs) That was when Usui-san was drumming, before we played at Hosei¹⁷. We practiced a lot then.

So you joined after Fushitsusha had taken an extended holiday?

Ozawa That's right. I don't know what incarnation of Fushitsusha it was, but it was like I appeared in a reborn Fushitsusha, after that long recess. There was Takashima-san and Osato-san, and Watanabe-san as well. I was caged up in the studio for about a year and a half with Haino-san and Usui-san.

You didn't play out at all?

Ozawa The first time I played was that trio at Hosei. Since then we've played every year there-come once a year and you can see how Fushitsusha have changed. (laughs) We had gone through five or six drummers during rehearsal. (laughs) The drummer has to take most of the pressure. Haino-san plays percussion too, and then there are the differences in the beat, the rhythm, the breathing-those are the most important things. Miura, how does it feel to play guitar with Haino-san? Is it a lot of work?

Miura Not really. The rhythm is probably the same as the drums. The way Haino-san moves his body probably looks slightly exaggerated, but those movements are almost always necessary for him to produce the rhythm. The rests, how much the first note is going to eat into the following one. . . stuff like that. But I can't do it all perfectly yet. There's a track called, "Natta'n ja nai"¹⁸, and if you transcribe the rhythm of the riff it comes out like this (...) In actual fact, the first rest sign is shorter than normal, and the last one is even shorter. But the difference from the norm is only very slight. In this kind of rhythm you don't play when your foot stamps down on the ground, you've got to leave it with your toenails hanging in space. (laughs) You're probably thinking, why are they making such a simple riff so complex, but it's actually not as simple as I've made it sound. It's almost taken for granted that we have so many songs like this. This differential rhythm is one of the keys to Fushitsusha's feeling of tension. I'm sorry for going on like this. but since I don't want you to misunderstand-this differential rhythm isn't something that you can work out numerically, like in prog or computer music. At the very least it's natural law, or a kind of breathing pattern.

Ozawa There's such a gap between what we do and the so-called normal style of playing an instrument, for example a jazz style or a rock style. People who have played in those styles must find it so difficult to cross that gap. People who have already learnt how to play in a certain way, who have developed their own style-then suddenly to be told to play another way, to destroy everything that you have spent time mastering. In that respect, I think there is nothing that could compare to Kobayashi-san's drumming. He came from never having played the drums at all to drumming with Fushitsusha-a very strange way of playing.

Kosugi I had a mystic revelation when I saw a video of Kobayashi-san playing. (laughs)

Ozawa It's so difficult to try and become flexible again after having mastered the so-called "basics". I reckon it would be impossible for a studio musician.

Miura A good example would be the former (Fushitsusha) drummer Akui. He played in various improvisation and avant-garde groups with me for five or six years, all the time studying jazz. So to a certain extent, he could respond immediately to anything you gave him, plus give you something back in return. But there were a lot of times when he would depart from the rhythm that we were trying to use in Fushitsusha. At that time we were able to finish the drum arrangements that usually took the most time very quickly, and then spend more time on the melody and harmony. But even still, there was something wrong-recently we played that "Natta'n ja nai" track in the studio with Kosugi-san, but it sounded different, it sounded like a proper Fushitsusha rhythm.

Kosugi Is the way we practice and write songs very different now?

Ozawa The basic pattern is pretty much the same.

Miura As I just said, we used to spend a lot of time on bits other than the drums, and we were able to write some new types of songs. But as time went on we began to feel that Akui-san was covering for us, and whatever we did we were constrained by his technique. So we went into retreat several times and really worked on it, to see if we could get back our original rhythm. But it was hard, and if we got it right one time then it would gradually start going wrong again. In other words, it's really hard for someone who has become proficient to a certain degree to forget all that. Haino-san calls it a bad habit.

Do you mean that your own technique holds back the music?

Miura If you are in complete control of your technique then there is no problem. But it's easiest to say that it becomes a hindrance.

Ozawa Because you don't progress beyond that level. It's like you're going in the wrong direction but you conceal it. On the surface you look accomplished but in reality you're not-and that comes out in your irritation. It's like if you had been writing in Japanese for all your life and then suddenly someone tried to make you write in a language you knew nothing about. (laughs) You're suddenly told that everything you have learnt is totally wrong, and you can't accept it.

Kosugi Haino-san seems to hate "hand habits".

Ozawa Yeah, those phrases that you have picked up and just play unconsciously.

Miura He was always warning me about them as well. Even though I had deliberately tried to get rid of them over the four or five years I had played with MTK. When I play together with him I can see it myself, which makes it all the more difficult.

Kosugi Maybe it's because he places real value on sounds, and if you play something without thinking about it then you're not treating the music as important.

Ozawa Automatic finger movements aren't real expression, are they? We used to play this song where we would just abandon ourselves to those movements though. Just like a machine. But we haven't played that recently.

Are you going to continue playing with FLUX from now?

Ozawa I never think about the future. (laughs) We can make up a schedule and play in two months, so . . .

Miura You're doing stuff that you can't do in Fushitsusha, aren't you?

Ozawa That's right. We don't do any practice at all-just go along on the day, play and then go home.

What stuff can't you do in Fushitsusha?

Ozawa Quiet sounds. (laughs)

Miura Fushitsusha plays the full range from tiny sounds to huge ones, so not quiet sounds in that sense.

I want to ask you about your impressions of the European tour.

Ozawa If you can call playing twice in Amsterdam a tour.

What was the audience response like?

Ozawa It was like this street festival where the people knew nothing at all about us, and just really came in to have a look.

Kosugi The first time we only played for about fifteen minutes, right?

Ozawa Yeah, ten minutes. There had been talk of us playing for half an hour or so. but when we arrived it turned out to be ten minutes. So we really went for it over those ten minutes.

Miura We played three hours worth in ten minutes. (laughs)

Ozawa Even though it was outdoors, we were soaked in sweat and gasping for air. It was strange, with all this kids running around, and it didn't really matter what we were saying-just that we were saying it energetically.

Kosugi-san, what did you think?

Kosugi There wasn't any strange prejudice.

Any differences with Japanese audiences?

Kosugi There was a different attitude to rock and jazz and so on. In Japan people tend to like one particular genre and stick to that, but I felt there was none of that there. The reaction was straight, and when people are approaching it totally blind like that maybe it's easier for them to get into Fushitsusha.

Ozawa Of course, people are most focussed on Haino-san out of the four of us. I'm really short-sighted so I have no idea what the audience response was like. All I can pick up is the mood.

Kosugi There was a flood of telephone complaints-the most in the history of the Amsterdam police. I think there were about twenty. (laughs)

Ozawa We played outside and there was a pretty righteous PA, so the same sound probably sounded really odd, so everyone automatically reached for the phone. Probably sounded like a bloodthirsty mob.

The second time you played was in a squat, wasn't it?

Ozawa At that festival someone said that they had a band and were playing the next day, and asked us if we wanted to play too. It was very loose-they didn't know if the PA would work or not, and there was no fixed time. But it was good.

Kosugi We played for about an hour, didn't we?

Ozawa About that. The guitar amp was totally fucked, and whatever you did the sound was distorted. But Haino-san is used to that kind of thing. (laughs) It's probably like that about 50% of the time for him.

Miura And he plays better when there is some kind of trouble.

Ozawa An appropriate amount of trouble. We were just there to play those shows in Amsterdam, but Haino-san was doing a European tour.

What do you think about Haino-san's work outside of Fushitsusha?

Ozawa I'm very careless and only ever go to see Haino-san's solo stuff when I am working the PA. I've only seen Nijumu¹⁹ once as well.

Kosugi You can look at a whole different way from Fushitsusha. Of course Haino-san's sense of rhythm is always going to shine through, and so there are implications in studying the solo stuff as well.

When he plays with other people, you can see lots of different aspects that aren't apparent in Fushitsusha, and it surprises you how much other stuff he is thinking about.

Kosugi The solo percussion shows especially show you Haino-san's sense of rhythm and beat unadulterated.

Miura Haino-san invites me, and I go to see him as much as time allows. I think that I want to know as much as humanly possible, but I always get something out of it. I still think that solo album "Watashi dake"²⁰ is mystical and crammed full of Haino-san. There's poems as well, like that last track "Moto no tokoro ni modoritai"²¹. There is a boom in medieval music at the moment and a lot of sounds false, but the first time I heard that track I thought that Haino-san was a medieval minstrel. I was firmly convinced of it. It was like something I knew in my cells. At that time I had been studying microtonal music. There are a lot of composers using the 24-note scale in modern composition, but every piece grates on the ear and there isn't much variation. Middle and Near Eastern music sounds a lot more natural but it's constrained by the form. However, all the tracks on "Watashi dake" are use very complex microtones, but they don't grate on the ear at all. When I listened to it again I thought that he didn't know about tuning, but if you think about it, there was no such thing as tuning in the first music. There's also a lot of that differential rhythm that I mentioned earlier. The space between the breathes is amazing too-even in the places where there is no sound there is this immense, heavy atmosphere. I have no idea how it is possible for the universe to exist in places where there is no sound. But there can be no doubt about it, it has been recorded on the LP. What I'm trying to say is that there is so much stuff that Haino has been able to transfer from the solo situation to Fushitsusha yet. To work out how we can do that is part of our responsibility as members of Fushitsusha. If we can accomplish it then I think that things will become easier for Haino-san. But it's going to take a long time, and we've got to be conscious of everything.

How do you write the songs in Fushitsusha?

Ozawa Up until recently we would write them on guitar and then work on the arrangement until they could be played live. Haino-san would use the stick to conduct us in the studio, and that was how we would do it.

So you would write the songs first in the studio?

Ozawa Right. Then there were times when we would jam for thirty minutes or so until we came up with something that we could use.

What is the mutual relationship like in the band?

Ozawa I pretty much try to stay out of other people's private business.

How about musically? When Haino-san plays solo he says that it makes him feel too good so he wants people who can get in the way of that. How does that make you feel about being members?

Ozawa It all depends on what nuance you give "getting in the way". When you play by yourself you become blind to all directions but one. So it's better if there is some external stimulus-you can take it that way as well.

Kosugi Especially in Haino's case, if he gets too carried away by the music then he loses the reason for doing it, doesn't he?

Ozawa If there's no friction or tension then it's boring. Without that then the monitors are up loud, the PA's great and everything's going fine. . . . and then he hates it. (laughs)

Miura-san, how do you feel?

Miura Umm. Say Haino-san has something that he wants to do: he thoroughly investigates it all and then at the instant when he becomes able to do it, it loses its colour for him and becomes tedious. Even if there is something that he has become able to do in the studio, he won't duplicate it on stage because there's no need. And when he plays solo then there are a lot more cases like that. So when you talk about "getting in the way", then if other sounds appear in the mix when he is investigating something, then it becomes more difficult to finish it. But if you keep on working at it, then totally unexpected paths may open up, right? I think that is what he expects.

Is there anything that you haven't completely used in Fushitsusha up until now?

Kosugi Firstly, the various ways of producing sounds. Just with one drum there are an infinite variety of sounds that you can make, and I don't think we've gone anywhere near using them all up. In free jazz there a lot of different sounds, but Haino-san has got a lot more than that even. That's the first point. In terms of producing waves of sound I think we are still weak. And related to that is transmitting to the other performers that you yourself are performing. I don't mean through the voice or sound, but through feeling or vibration-I think we are still weak in that respect. If I want to change the sound myself, or start something new, then I can't communicate it to the rest of the band, or else they ignore me. Haino-san says it's because my vibrations are still weak. Those two points are the ones I am most focussed upon.

So are there times when you are performing and you think that the other members should play something a certain way and it would be better?

Kosugi There's nothing very difficult. Nothing like speeding up the tempo and everyone fitting in with that. We have 8-beat songs and other faster ones, but there's no real playing along with the beat.

Ozawa-san, is there anything that you think should be done in a different way?

Ozawa In effect, what is being asked of me is not to play normal songs in a normal way-I can't play like a normal bassist. (laughs) The things being asked of me aren't normal, and the least I can do is do that right. Especially melody lines and chord construction-stuff that even junior high school bassists can do-I can't even understand or master. Recently there are a lot of songs where the structure is fairly tight, and they are difficult for me. I'm always being told to just do the best I can with-but I can't, and I told Haino-san so the other day. (laughs)

Miura But you can handle things where the rhythm is difficult, even close to perfect.

Ozawa I'm confident that I would lose out to junior-high bassists if I had to play some normal rock and roll. (laughs) I'm paying the penalty now for constantly refusing to play normal stuff. . . .If you think about it in a normal way, everyone has a certain foundation and then they build upon that, right? But the first thing I did, the first thing I wanted to do was free music, Albert Ayler. The first time I heard Ayler it was like something I had been waiting for-but I couldn't hear him live because he died, right? So instead, I went to see Takaki Mototeru, and it sounded different from the record: it sounded raw and I was totally entranced by a feeling of real-ness. Just hearing improvised music performed like that was so amazing, and it made me want to play too so that's why I took up the bass. At first I didn't know what I wanted to do so I went out and bought a second-hand sax and a second-hand guitar amp. (laughs) Then I borrowed a guitar from someone-I didn't know which one I wanted to play. But it suddenly struck me that there was no one in free music using an electric bass-though of course, I didn't plan it all out that logically, I just drifted in that direction. I just like the bass, even in a normal rock band. I always liked Creedence Clear Water Revival and thought that boys like Steve Cook were cool-not the guys who are upfront, but the ones who are just banging away in the background. So I just transferred that into free music, because I'm so lazy. (laughs)

If you had to be precise, which song clicks the most with you?

Ozawa There's a couple that we don't play live, because I can't play them: one called "Acchi"²² , and another one called "Omae"²³. Those tracks are just made to be taken apart. There's a track on the CD called "Koko"²⁴, and if you listen to the bass it's so fucked up. Listen out for it next time. (laughs) It's just too bad. I hate listening to myself play, once something's over it's over. After I've played live I always just forget all about it.

So you don't really care about leaving something behind on record or CD?

Ozawa Not in the slightest. I'm embarrassed about leaving something behind like that, but there's nothing I can do about it. Once you've played a note it's no longer yours. It becomes the property of the listener. As a whole music is something that belongs to the listener, though of course you are the one who hears it first. I take all the best bits out for myself, which is why I enjoy playing with a band. But once you make a record or play live then the listener makes up his own meanings from the music. I'm used to it now though . . . . everyone hears and interprets differently. There are a lot of people who try and put in meaning from the musician's side, but it doesn't matter if that gets communicated or not. Music isn't the same as language and people can make up their own meanings, so it doesn't matter if your original meaning gets lost. But in one way it's also a hindrance, and at the moment we are at the stage of thinking about how to get beyond that.

Miura-san, what do you think?

Miura Personally, the weak point that I am concentrating on the most at the moment is how to use my body to handle the rhythm. I don't mean to use my body the same way as Haino-san does, but I think that I must have my own method somewhere and I just haven't been able to find it properly so far. I've so many weak points that I'm embarrassed. (laughs) There are a lot of things that I want to do, things that I've got to do. When I was sixteen or seventeen I studied quite a bit of jazz and classical theory, but then I tried and forget it all to concentrate on rock. It got in the way.So I broke it all up, but now in Fushitsusha in order to take one step forward . . . .

Ozawa Haino-san isn't exactly against music that has existed up until now. But there's a way you can absorb everything and then produce something greater than just a sum of all the parts, isn't there? For example, within a classical frame-work Haino-san could make something that would go beyond classical music. So I don't think that Haino-san is specifically anti-anything.

Miura-san, when you tried to rid yourself of music theory, were you thinking that music as a whole that had absorbed theory from other sources?

Miura That was three or four years before I joined Fushitsusha, but at that time I didn't think at all about music as a whole. I just felt instinctively that I had to get rid of everything I had learnt. So I did. But once I had done that, there was nothing left-nothing new appeared. So after that I ran after "blackness"-a blackness as a symbol that includes everything. It's a lot more difficult that destroying something, and takes a lot more time. But I had to stop before I could progress very far, and then luckily I was able to continue it again in Fushitsusha. I'm still progressing, although I still haven't studied enough.

Do you have any intention of writing songs in Fushitsusha?

Miura Of course. It's something that I'm constantly thinking about.

Ozawa I always manage to trip everyone up when it comes to writing songs. (laughs)

Miura That's because you're so good at improvising.

Ozawa You mean that's all I can do. (laughs)

Miura Songs get completed to a certain level, and then when it comes to putting chords to it . . . we just choose chords that we can play, even if they don't fit the song. (laughs)

Ozawa And that's a half-baked way of doing it. It's all connected with what we said earlier about technique, but we can't go on in the same way as we have done up till now.

Miura From now on, as I said earlier, we are going to need certain basics to make any progress with Fushitsusha. Classical theory and so on are becoming essential.

Ozawa I reckon that to a certain extent Haino-san has a curriculum for Fushitsusha's progress already worked out in his head.

Miura Definitely.

Miura It's virtually impossible to completely theorize most of what Haino-san is doing, but to a certain extent it is possible to explain it in those terms. Haino-san works purely on sensation, he doesn't know anything about scales and chords. He doesn't do it when we play live, but if you play a chord that sounds like a four-beat scale, then he can play perfectly in that scale. But with the addition of some something, some alpha. He mixed all these shivery sounds into the scale. When we write a song, I take it home afterwards and analyze it-find out what modes there are and so on. So I can explain his songs and harmony to a certain extent. On the very simplest level he has two types of song: one uses a lot of immensely tense root plus fifths chords, but he doesn't use any thirds. Thirds decide whether the song is major or minor, so when you don't use them you are able to produce a strong "melody-vibration". They used a lot of those kind of chords in medieval music. It's a bit too free and frightening for my tastes though. The other type of song uses the contemporary atonal twelve tone scale. Since it's atonal, it's neither major or minor but embraces both. But what makes it even more complicated is that the chords have no clear root-make one mistake and the whole thing falls apart. But Haino-san manages to bring distinct modes to those type of chord combinations, and using the mode as an axis he can freely use a full-scale. The reason why I am explaining like this is because Haino-san himself wants to know how exactly it works apart from on the purely sensory level, he wants to know how it works in theory.

Ozawa Of course, there are rules that turn it all into "rock"-bang out a power chord and immediately it's rock. There's definitely something at the core that is rock.

Miura There's a lot of different stuff as well, but when it comes down to it, it's all meaningless if we don't rock. It's just got to be cool.

FUSHITSUSHA DISCOGRAPHY

Note:Since this interview was carried out, Fushitsusha's discography has expanded considerably. An up-to-date discography is available on the Unofficial Keiji Haino Homepage. Below is the original discography included with this article.

Fushitsusha

• Live DLP [Jpn, PSF, 1989] reissued on DCD [Jpn, PSF 1997]
• "Omae Kotchi" on Tokyo Flashback comp CD [Jpn, PSF, 1991]
• Live DCD [Jpn, PSF, 1991]
• "Marianne" on Tokyo Flashback 2 comp CD [Jpn, PSF, 1992]
• Live 1991.9.26 19:15-20:08 video [Jpn, PSF, 1992]
• Allegorical Misunderstandings CD [Jpn, Avant, 1993]
• "Ki ga tsukidashita" on Tokyo Flashback 3 comp CD [Jpn, PSF, 1993]
• Pathetique CD [Jpn, PSF, 1994]
• The Caution Appears CD [France, Les Disques du Soleil et de l'Acier, 1995]
• disc 4 in The Soul's True Love 4CD box set [Jpn, Purple Trap, 1995]
• The Wound . . . . DCD [UK, Blast First, 1996]
• track from The Caution Appears on Tokyo Invasion Vol.1-Cosmic Kurushi Monsters DCD comp. [UK, Virgin, 1996]
• A Death Never To Be Complete CD [Japan, Tokuma Communications, 1997]
• The Time Is Nigh CD [Japan, Tokuma Communications, 1997]

Yasushi Ozawa

• East Bionic Symphonia same LP [Jpn, Kojima, 1976]
• with Machine Gun, track on Aiyoku Jinmin Juji Gekijo comp LP [Jpn, Pinakotheca, 1981]

Maki Miura

• with Ohkami no Jikan "Thin City Pt.2" on Tokyo Flashback 2 CD comp. [Jpn, PSF, 1992]
• with Keiji Haino and Pill (as Ogreish Organism) Hikari = Shi 45 [Jpn, HG Fact, 1994]

Katsurei

• Paradise K. LP/CD [Jpn, Cherry Boy, 1987]
• Live 88 LP/CD [Jpn, Balcony Records, 1988]
• Neifuran CD [Jpn, Victor Invitation, 1989]
• Yure tsuzukeru CD [Jpn, Victor Invitation, 1990]
• Live 9091 CD [Jpn, SSE, 1991]

Shizuka

• Shizuka cassette [Jpn, 1993]
• track on Tokyo Flashback 3 CD comp. [Jpn, PSF, 1993]
• "Yo ni nokosu uta" on Tokyo Flashback 4 CD comp. [Jpn, PSF, 1996]
• Tenkai no persona CD [Jpn, PSF, 1995]
• Live Shizuka CD [USA, persona non grata, 1995]
• Shizuka video [Jpn, 1995]
• Shizuka cassette [Jpn, 1996]
• track from Tenkai no persona on Toyko Invasion DCD comp. [UK, Virgin, 1996]

Jun Kosugi

• Dendo Pudding Om CD [Jpn, Oz, 1994]

Notes

1 All names are given in Western format-ie surname last. The normal Japanese order is the reverse of this.

2 Miura is no longer a full-time member of Fushitsusha. He has recently been concentrating his attention on playing guitar in his wife's band, Shizuka. He can be heard on the first Fushitsusha DLP and on the "Allegorical Misunderstanding" studio record on Avant.

3 Ex-Fushitsusha drummer. His work can be heard on the recently reissued first Fushitsusha DLP.

4 Okami no Jikan (Time of Wolves) is one of the many projects instigated by High Rise/Musica Transonic bassist and one-man scene Asahito Nanjo. The line-up tends to float. They recently changed their name to Seventh Seal and released an LP on the Acme label. They also have a stack of cassettes on Nanjo`s La Musica label. See the interview with Nanjo in Opprobrium #3 for more details.

5 The name translates as Motorised Creme Caramel. They have a CD.

6 Japanese "folk" legend. He has a bunch of amazing solo releases on PSF, and has also played with Haino in the "live in the 1st year of Heisei" trio and in the still extant Vajra.

7 An annual student arts festival held on the Komaba campus of the prestigious Tokyo University.

8 Kosugi has recently left Fushitsusha and has been replaced by Ikuro Takahashi, who has previously drummed with High Rise, Kosokuya, Che Shizu, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, etc.

9 The East Bionic Symphony had one record. They recently reformed (under the name Marginal Consort) and performed a very long gig, which will possibly be released on PSF in the future.

10 Takehisa Kosugi is a seminal pure avant-garde musician/artist. He was responsible for forming Group Ongaku, Japan`s first free improvisation group, in the late fifties while at college (Group Ongaku have an archival CD on Hear Art Sound Library). Later he also founded the legendary multi-media improv group Taj Mahal Travellers (who released two LPs). He has some records (a solo LP called "Catch Wave", solo violin CD on Lovely Music, and he also appears on the "Angels have passed" trio with Motoharu Yoshizawa on PSF-Bruce Russell`s favourite PSF release.

11 A rather expensive suburb in the south-west of central Tokyo.

12 Japanese potato-based "vodka". A very rough drink indeed.

13 Hip area in the west of Tokyo, with a lot of students and "live-houses", like the famous Mandala², recent home to Kan Mikami and Kazuki Tomokawa.

14 Seminal, and now defunct, Tokyo music venue.

15 Unkown but vastly important figure in the Japanese underground. Member of Noise. Founder of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, who have a couple of tracks on Tokyo Flashback 2 & 3, and a 3CD set on Org.

16 Major Japanese pop artiste with a horrible voice.

17 University in Tokyo.

18 "Become"

19 As well as Haino's second solo album, Nijiumu also refers to another Haino unit, currently inactive but supposedly not defunct. Nijiumu the band has no fixed members except Haino (Nanjo from High Rise et al, and Taku Sugimoto have both been involved), and is very, er, "mystical". Mostly famous for sending people to sleep, they have a very choice CD on PSF, and more recently a disk in the "Driftworks" 4CD set on Big Cat (UK).

20 "Only me?". Haino's first solo album, originally released on the Minor-run label Pinakotheca, and now only sporadically available at very expensive prices. Luckily PSF has reissued it on CD, with the addition of some extra-stunning live tracks. Absolutely essential for any understanding of Haino`s work.

21 "I want to return from whence I came"

22 "Over there"

23 "You"

24 "Here"