jaimie branch

In June, Broadcast (a publication backed by the Brooklyn arts space Pioneer Works, where I've seen tons of great shows in recent years), asked me if I'd like to interview jaimie branch. I responded with an enthusiastic yes. We met in Red Hook on the evening of July 27, 2022, and I found her to be just as wise, engaging and unfiltered — not to mention hilarious — in person as she was onstage. Shockingly, less than a month later, she was gone. Here is that conversation, along with select audio excerpts. Farewell to a legend.

Infinity again: On Fushitsusha's radical songmaking

It is very possible that tonight's Fushitsusha performance at Pioneer Works — co-presented by Blank Forms, and part of a highly impressive series of gigs going down as part of the Grand Ole Opera exhibit; I caught Black Pus there a couple weeks back — is still in progress. (I left before the end not because I was disappointed, not remotely so, but because I felt I had simply taken in as much musical/aesthetic information as I could for one night.) Which is apt, because there is what I would call a forever quality to the group's music, a sense that no matter how long one of their pieces actually lasts — and from what I heard, that could be anywhere from under 5 minutes to upwards of 20 — you can sort of sink into to the vibe or aura of it, get lost, roam around, disengage your brain and just exist within it. The time that you, and the musicians, spend with the piece may begin, end, but there's a sense that the idea or the substance of it was somehow there before, and will continue after.

Maybe this trio — leader Keiji Haino on whatever the hell he feels like playing at a given moment, along with current collaborators Morishige Yasumune on bass and Ryosuke Kiyasu on drums — conceptualized some of these pieces at earlier shows (possibly even at last night's concert at the same venue, billed as "Silent," whereas tonight's was called "Heavy") or rehearsals; maybe they'll pick them up again in the future. But each time they would begin a new piece, and I probably heard them play about seven or eight, it felt instantly sound, logical, focused in its way and delivered with direction and intent and some kind of form, though usually not any kind of conventional one. That form could take the shape of a sort of rubato vamp — as a friend of mine, Khanate and Blind Idiot God drummer Tim Wyskida, pointed out during a mid-show chat, the band often explores a "third" rhythmic space between strict metric time and fully free time — where Kiyasu would play a repeated series of figures (say, two massive thumps on the floor tom followed by one snare hit, a cymbal crash and four snare / hi-hat / bass drum accents) and Haino and Yasumune would sort of conjure a charred, convulsive field of sound over top. (One long piece in this vein at tonight's show felt massive and infinite, like the last rock band on earth hammering their instruments into oblivion atop some post-apocalyptic slag heap; probably not coincidentally, it also sounded a lot like the Melvins, and reminded me of the time I saw Haino and them play alternating sets as part of a film-score event back in '06.) Or it could manifest as a sort of negative-space anti-rock boogie, featuring Haino on almost jazzy clean-toned guitar, as sparse and scrappy as the aforementioned piece had been world-swallowing and epic. Or a hushed ghost blues featuring Haino on plaintive harmonica and spooky, pillowy toned vocals, like the result of some sort of supernatural after-hours session at Sun Studios. Or a brief, glorious, driving crunch-rock groove detour, over almost as soon as it began.

Or some other pattern or approach or sonic zone that Haino saw fit to engage with. He conferred with the other musicians often, both between and during pieces, sometimes whispering instructions into their ears, sometimes using hand signals — a swelling, both-hands-to-the-sky-motion; what looked like numbers traced in the air; "come-on" gestures that seemed to call for an intense response of some kind; or what seemed like rhythmic patterns being dictated; Ben Ratliff's discussion of Haino as a master of gesture ("It is about gesture: a scream, or a silence, or a sudden lunge, which says all there is to know at that moment") in a recent 4Columns essay seems apt here. The other musicians watched him intently and however dense or abstract the music got, they never seemed to be functioning in a state of abandon. Their movements and responses seemed ritualistic and highly deliberate, like physical mantras designed to help Haino and the music as a whole reach that place of ecstatic forever-ness. And again, that ecstasy was not always loud, overdriven, violent. Sometimes it was nimble, shadowy, delicate, with Kiyasu on brushes and Yasumune playing sparse sprinklings of notes. The contrasts and transitions were extremely shrewd, making this concert of ostensibly improvised music feel like a masterfully paced recital.

In some ways, Fushitsusha's method seems to render obsolete the composed vs. improvised question because to my ears they seem to be plucking songs out of the air — brutal ones, gossamer ones, epics, miniatures, etc. — and animating and inhabiting them through some secret group method that could just as easily be the product of meticulous rehearsal (as in drilling, repetition) as it could be the result of simply highly attentive jamming among musicians who know one another's reflexes and desires, just as they know the will and intent of their collective project. Which is, to my ears at least, to make something clear and defined each time out, a new song but also an eternal and inevitable one. We don't have the terminology for this method of music-making, or at least I'm not aware of any suitable words, but really all it is, is devoted band-ism, the construction of not just a group sound but a group way of existing. With Fushitsusha, the results of this practice are extremely varied; what's consistent is the sense of concentration and sincerity, spiked with an alluring and magical X factor, which is Haino's palpable rock-star aura, not just the borderline-iconic silver mane and shades but the possessed intensity and (again with the Sun Studios line of thinking) sort of diva-ish, just-shy-of-a-tantrum fury of his movements, musical phrases and wild vocal emanations.

You put all this together and you get a sort of wonderful paradox: a band that seems to be pushing past the limits of genre, of temporal constraints (again, they very well may still be playing down there in Red Hook, close to four hours after they began), of the way music — or performance of any kind — conventionally happens in front of an audience, while at the same time enacting the basic, primal ritual of rock-and-roll showmanship. Maybe it's just that we've been so dulled to the mystery, the potential, the infinity of the latter that we need to receive our songs in new, unfamiliar forms. So they can feel like forever again. And Fushitsusha's creations, in whatever guise, certainly do feel that way – and will hence.

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Postscript:
I'm aware that this group, in its various incarnations, has a vast discography stretching back something like 40 years. But though I know bits and pieces of Haino's recorded work, I'm hardly an expert in this sector of his back catalog. I welcome any recommendations re: great Fushitsusha albums in the comments: I'm genuinely curious to know if any recording could really bottle this band's lightning.

True calling: Dead Moon and Borbetomagus live

There are bands that become legend. You read of them for years, in zines and on the internet, often learning of the reverence for the thing before learning of the thing itself. I say "thing" rather than "music" because bands like this come bundled with a whole mythology. So it was with Dead Moon and Borbetomagus—two groups I'd heard about for years and barely heard before last night, when I saw them share an Issue Project Room–backed bill (also featuring a great solo appearance by J Mascis) at Pioneer Works.

Age has a lot to do with it—this underground mythology. "So-and-so have been at it since such-and-such time." All sorts of other factors play into it: biography, even graphic design. Dead Moon, founded in 1987, have it all. One of the coolest logos I—or any underground-music fan, if they're being honest—has ever seen: the screaming-skeleton/crescent-moon design with the drippy-letters font, the kind of iconography that gutter punks and black-metal heads and noise freaks all seem to agree on. The fact that the band is co-fronted by a husband-and-wife team, Fred and Toody Cole, proud grandparents who have been married for 48 years (!).

I don't think I'd heard more than a song or two by Dead Moon before last night's show. (And maybe a few by Pierced Arrows, the Coles' more current project, which is essentially the band I saw last night, as the Pioneer Works gig featured Arrows drummer Kelly Halliburton rather than Moon drummer Andrew Loomis.) Sometimes that can be a hindrance to enjoying a rock show, but that wasn't the case here. Dead Moon have a certain ceremonial way of making a venue, a night, entirely theirs.

I'd spotted the Coles hanging out on one of the upper floors of Pioneer Works during the first couple sets, scoping out the bands. Fred in this enormous black witch hat, Toody with the straggly black-and-gray hair. Once they took the stage, along with Halliburton, a tall, imposing dude wearing skin-tight St. Marks Place–style punk attire and an MC5 T-shirt (yes, it was almost too perfect…) you could tell they were lifers. Setting up, the three had an easy camaraderie, passing set lists between them, clinking beer cans, welcoming front-row fans with wide grins and uniting around Halliburton's kit for a final pre-show huddle.

Looking back, the set itself was a bit of a blur for me. It carried me along, like a drug or a magic carpet. I was transported, initiated might be the better word, into this environment that Dead Moon creates, this bubble where rock & roll is timeless and hungry and passionate and dangerous. The band has a sort of theatrical defiance to them, manifested in Toody's feral stare and imposing stage stance and in Fred's ragged, plaintive vocals, delivered, Lemmy-style, from slightly under the mic, with eyes closed and a wince of abandon and surrender and determination. But there was this other side to the trio's interaction—a camaraderie, a relishing of the preciousness of this perfect medium that they've found to express all they need to express. It was like watching a biker gang assume a tough-guy posture for a photo op, and then drop it once the camera had clicked, back-slapping and cracking up.

The music itself is a strange, primal snarl. It's a puzzle how it sounds so archaic yet so alive. I know that Dead Moon are rough contemporaries and regional cronies of the Wipers, and there's a definite kinship there, a willingness to mine a classic garagey rawk sound for its most dirgey, gloom-laden elements. Dead Moon isn't a metal band, but their songs embody this sort of exaggerated gothic drama, as well as punk's headlong drive—Greg Sage filtered through Screaming Jay Hawkins, maybe? I was surprised and impressed by the variety of the songs, and their potent anthemic quality: "54/40 or Fight," with its stop-time refrain, had me pumping my fist along after one verse/chorus cycle, and "I Hate the Blues," a dark, plodding waltz with a cyclical form that culminates with Fred yowling, "God-damn, I hate the blues!"

It was all such swagger and looseness and stylish attack. The iconography come to life: the logo, the attire (I've neglected to mention Fred's ’70s style leather vest, bolo tie and guitar strap studded with pieces of antler), the attitude. The music did it all justice. Posturing, performing, acting—it all becomes being when the music is strong, driving, dramatic enough. Alchemy occurs and you, the listener, feel like you're mainlining some old, original feeling, like punk chronicled in a Faulkner novel and reanimated before your eyes.














Or noise, for that matter. Borbetomagus, at it since ’79! I'd sampled the records, had a sense of what this trio was about. Again, the legend. The name that weird-music fans love to throw out like a gleeful curse word—like a secret handshake meaning "I'm a sonic masochist." I don't really go in much for "noise" as a style. But I felt what saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich and guitarist Donald Miller were throwing down. Again, the physicality is inescapable: the saxists, these graying, tall, granitic men who look like types you'd encounter at happy hour in a factory-town dive bar, and the stocky, goateed Miller, with the appearance of a WFMU record collector type.

The sound was rich and painful and loud, and the performance ritualistic. Dietrich is by far the most animated, engaging in all sorts of expressionistic body language—an exaggeratedly wide-legged stance, momentary hand/arm wiggles. The two saxists tossing mics into the bells of their horns. Miller sitting there looking half-idle, strumming and using a slide and manipulating a volume pedal. At first the sound is undifferentiated—a not-unpleasant roar, a pressure on the ears. But then you start to adjust, and to align the saxists' cheek-puffing with the pulsations you're detecting, and you come to appreciate that, though amplified and distorted nearly beyond recognition, what you're hearing are predominantly breath-generated sounds. And then the presentation becomes almost wholesome. Borbetomagus is imposing but not assaultive. Noise bands often affect a sort of "vs. the audience" posture, but this set felt very private, like these guys simply need to do this thing that they've been doing for the past 35 years, and if they weren't doing it onstage, they'd be doing it in one of the members' basements on a weeknight.

Again, the legend become real. And it was warmer and more inviting than I expected. These bands are and aren't what you think they are. Longevity in underground music doesn't always mean profundity, but it does signify a kind of all-in commitment. Dead Moon and Borbetomagus believe in their respective aesthetics, and you can walk in off the street, so to speak, with no prior knowledge—or, as I did, with only a vague, sort of caricatured knowledge—and feel the love and commitment radiating out through these very different stylistic portals. It's all volume and defiance, as well as a friendly embrace of the like-minded. You feel both crushed and caressed, like you're in good, firm but loving hands. The world clicks into place, and you feel the rightness of artists doing what they were put on the planet to do, rising up to meet their true calling. And you feel reinvigorated to go out and do the same.