Search - Haino Keiji, Bill Laswell, Rashied Ali :: Decided ... Already the Motionless Heart of Tranquility, Tangling The Prayer Called "I"

Radical therapy

ptitchitza | Leiden, Netherlands | 03/17/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I've stayed a bit longer in the office, enjoying the solitude.Reached in a drawer full of CDs, for something extreme to purify me from all the human noise this day has brought. I went for the ultimate: a CD of a band called Purple Trap (consisted of Haino Keiji, probably the 'craziest' of the guitar heroes, plus Rashied Ali and Bill Laswell). Never before did I manage to listen to it for more than 5 minutes. That's should tell a lot, 'cause I have two very big, curious and hungry ears.The CD is called "Decided... Already The Motionless Heart Of Tranquility, Tangling The Prayer Called "I" "20 minutes on, and it all starts making sense! I thought these guys were basically making fun of the so-called avant-guard being a priori taken seriously: all three of them have quite a reputation so they could record their most drunken session and still be taken seriously. But no! Somehow, after an extreme day such as this one these noises and twisted vocals, this extreme, tormented, disjointed mess of sound is not Chaos. It's precisely the Logos, as it exists, the shredded logos, the familiar and causal chaos. These are the facts of the day, they didn't just happen, they're result of an experience. It IS the logos pervading the body at this given moment, this joined mass of tissue and blood and nerves and... It's the loose logos that waits to be re-aligned. And boy... are these guys re-aligning it!!! They keep at it for 125 minutes on the 2CD set.And the titles... they are exactly appropriate: "The Reassembling Place Of Dispersed Holy Murderous Thought", "I Already Know The Settlement Of Iridescent Happiness", "I Can Hear A Scream... A Scream Resembling A Scream", "Only Half Of An Imitation Of Your Imitation Of Yourself", "Come To This Side... Sadness", "Supposedly Generous Possesors Of Death Meet A Warning While Napping", "Where Shall Released Time Go Next?"Pheeeeew!"

Decent, but not great.

Robert P. Beveridge | Cleveland, OH | 03/29/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Purple Trap, Decided... Already the Motionless Heart of Tranquility, Tangling the Prayer Called "I" (Tzadik, 1999)I wasn't quite sure what to expect from a supergroup with avant-guitar genius Keiji Haino and dub producer/bassist Bill Laswell. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't what I got from this odd, intriguing little album.Really, the best way to describe what this album contains is likely "free jazz." But free jazz with a Naked City feel to it. Jangly guitar and rubber-club-dub bass flow around the atmosphere, never really cohering, with (what I assume are Japanese, but unintelligible either way) howled, screamed vocals thrown atop the mix. Not the frenetic screechings of Naked City vocalist Yamatsuka Eye; rather, the vocals here, despite the method of delivery, seem almost languid.I'm not a big fan of free jazz, to be honest. I love the ambient work I've heard from both Heino and Laswell, and so I'm willing to cut them some slack and assume this album will eventually grow on me. If this makes any sense, it's chaotic, but not quite chaotic enough; it lacks the all-out breakdown of noise, while not having enough structure to class in the same school as Laswell's brilliant side project Automaton. It's listenable, but the in-between-ness probably makes it something I won't pull out all that often. ** ½"