Search - Haino Keiji, Yoshida Tatsuya :: Uhrfasudhasdd

A Chaotic Avant-Garde Musical Maelstrom

Robert I. Hedges | 07/18/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

""Uhrfasudhasdd" is an interesting and diverse look into the dark underbelly of Japanese avant-garde musical expressionism. The purveyors of this lot, Haino Keiji and Yoshida Tatsuya, remind me a lot of John Cage at the creative inflection point that resulted in the creation of "HPSCHD", only with less emphasis on melody.



The tracks range from interesting to unlistenable, but deserve credit for all being unique works derivative of nothing else. My favorites on the CD are "Lokskooidgiif" with it's intriguing interplay of vocals and instrumental elements, "Ddbjifpgorkh" with primitive guitar and delicate flute parts playing off each other in an otherworldly manner, and "Zhuddiposshk" which is a hauntingly disjointed electronic nightmare enhanced with hints of howling and a stronger than expected rhythm line executed on cymbals.



On the other end of the spectrum were "Ryufoispjekkossd", the opening track and general screamfest, "Cchjdisoiugpodf" which is generally impossible to listen to due to the myriad of disjointed electronic alarms involved, and "Fiuijkdfgpokwom" a musical piece so discordant, that even when that's the point, it's unbearable. For me the negatives associated with these examples (and several others) outweighs the positives found in the more imaginative pieces on "Uhrfasudhasdd".



For the serious student of atonal music, harmonic discord, or the lover of anything off the beaten path, this may be worth investigating, but the people who will want to listen to this are few and far between. For those few, however, Keiji and Tatsuya are unique avant-garde oracles of the surreal, and this CD will more than reward their fans."