Animamima

Keiji Haino is an extremely open-minded improviser, but one with specific creative goals. He throws himself into unexpected contexts all the time, but always brings his essential qualities — darkness, intensity, ritualistic focus — wherever he goes. This unique double CD documents a one-off performance with Sitaar Tah! (punctuation in original), a group of 20 sitar players. Haino himself plays flute, hurdy-gurdy, and shruti box (a bellows-powered instrument similar to a harmonium). The two long pieces — 46 and 51 minutes, respectively — sound like the early section of the Doors’ “The End,” the part where the helicopters are flying in slow motion as the napalm wipes out the landscape, and then the ceiling fan spins overhead and Coppola gives us a close-up of Martin Sheen’s glazed eyes, but stretched out to 90 minutes. And when Haino takes his flute solo, you could remix it into Miles Davis’s “He Loved Him Madly” without difficulty.