Busyness with wrestling the great firewall and some personal matters meant that I couldn't post here for a little bit. I did, however, find an old empty cloud I have, so I felt like putting it to some good use.
Fushitsusha are a legendary band from the Japanese underground. Any description besides "experimental" would feel incorrect to apply to their vast body of work, which started originally as a duo between Haino and synthesist Tomio Shiraishi in 1978, but would very soon reform as a power trio, an instrumental line-up which would change from time to time, but is their staple. Of course, Haino is a multi-instrumentalist (known to be able to play more than 80 instruments), and this was often reflected in performances, and while the bass guitar and drumkit backing band would sometimes have it's form changed, be it through addition or subtraction, it has become their best known configuration since it started. Various members have come and gone, but other than Haino himself, the most well known member is bass guitarist Yasushi Ozawa, who's signature fuzzy yet clear tone had been a staple since he joined the band, some time in the 80s. Their first official release would go on to be recorded and released in 1989.
Contained within are various bootlegs I could find, mostly in lossless compression, directly taped at live shows. The archive is split into two: unlabeled bootlegs, and the Secret Black Box. With regards to the unlabeled ones, most of these came with .txt files with some context, sometimes revealing a wealth of information, sometimes revealing a distinct poverty of it. Others come with more than just a .txt, others come with absolutely nothing besides the raw files. Secret Black Box is a recording of a single live show, performed on the 13th of December, 2003, after the departure of drummer Ikuro Takahashi. The band simply carried on as a duo between Haino and Ozawa, and with regards to its contents, I will let the words written by an anonymous bootlegger speak here:
I'm going to finish this Fushitsusha series off with the granddaddy of all marathons, which clocks in at about 7 hours. They took no breaks other than to get set up at different instruments from time to time. After the August marathon, I knew to prepare myself: don't drink any liquids for a few hours prior, bring some food, extra tapes and batteries. I should have brought a pillow, given the chairs they had there. I once asked Haino how he did this show with no bathroom break. His response: Shhhh'.It's a secret. I lasted about 5.5 hours, but the splice is pretty much unnoticeable.
The bootleg on this archive, however, was recorded by Phil Snider to demonstrate the capabilities of the aRCHIVE records label. A copy was directly given to Haino, who was impressed enough that he had approved for some of his following recordings outside of Fushitsusha to be released on it. The box set itself has reached a legendary status among Haino bootleggers, both due to the care taken when recording it, and the performance within. There are plenty of bootlegs due to his open approval of bootlegging his performances, which are often traded around as CDrs, but this one represents an apex, of sorts, that no bootleg had reached yet.
Out of dedication to quality curatorship, I will update the archive within reason. The cloud drive's limit is 20 gigabytes, of which almost 16 are already taken up by the unlabeled ones, and Secret Black Box is 2 and a half on its own. Some serious work was put in by all these traders, and while I may be the one assembling the collection, ultimately we have them to thank after Haino himself for being able to hear any of this. The nature of the anonymity of most of them means we most likely never can, though.
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