Ace Hotel x Moog Sound Lab // Keiji Haino

Expect the unexpected with the Japanese legend at Ace Hotel tomorrow evening.

Where is he from: Born in Chiba, Japan, Keiji has resided in Tokyo for years and years.

What he gets up to: Keiji Haino is a byword for forward thinking avant-garde experimentation. He’s a musician for whom the concept of boundaries means fuck all.

A bit more background: The word ‘legend’ is bandied around a bit too often in music for our liking, but every so often an artist is deserving of the tag. The incomparable Keiji Haino is one of them. Since the ‘70s Haino has refuted categorization, tirelessly — and endlessly — reworking the rulebook. Haino’s an extremist to the core, a master of reworking and re-modulating sound. You might know him from his work as part of Fushitsusha, a skyscraping avant-rock group who are about as far removed from the concept of a traditional rock band as it’s possible to get. You might know him, too, for his string of collaborative works with the likes of Derek Bailey, Merzbow, Oren Armbachi, John Zorn, Loren Connors, or Jim O’Rourke. Or you might know him as the guitar god with the immaculate mane of pristine hair and a permanently attached pair of very snazzy sunglasses. In essence, Haino’s a fucking cool dude who makes most of the musicians most of us fawn over look like the work-shy fops they are.

Influenced as much by the Doors as he is Xenakis, Keiji Haino’s devoted his working life to consistently defying expectation. He’s a DJ, a blues connoisseur, a provocateur and straight edge vegetarian. He’s Keiji fucking Haino.

What to expect from the performance: That’d be telling. With Haino, we’ve come to expect the unexpected. However unexpected that expectation might be.

Check out the rest of August's activity in the Moog Sound Lab takeover of Ace Hotel here.

Catch Keiji Hano performaning in the Miranda basement space on Saturday August 29th (RSVP).

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