My picks for "ones to watch for '94", in a January 1994 issue of Melody Maker. The other writers picks are right at the bottom.
Foul Play makes sense. (Later in '94, the "mysterious outfit" became less mysterious as I met Brad + John in a cafe in Belsize Park, where I lived for most of the year, for an interview).
The other nomination, though, is a bit of a head-scratcher, because clearly I must have been pretty taken with Keiji Haino at precisely the time of writing - but it's not something I followed through with, at all.
If memory serves, Kevin Martin - we used to hang out quite a bit in those days and back then he was almost as much a critic as a musician, had a column in the Tower Records magazine - Kev gave me a tape of Fushitsusha.
Pretty soon jungle and electronic music took up all of my bandwidth, the avant-rock stuff got shunted aside pretty much.
Vague memories of actually seeing Haino, much later, playing in NYC.
Listening to this again - almost certainly for the first time since - it really don't sound like my cup o' tea at all!
Whereas this, this is what I want played at my funeral.
Apropos of nothing: a place Kevin liked to meet was Bunjie's Coffee House, in Litchfield Street (where The Mousetrap played for decades, and where I saw it as an 11 year old). Much, much later I learned Bunjies had been a legendary folk cellar. Now I get a retrospective thrill at the idea of having once been in a space through which passed Anne Briggs - and who knows what other folk goddesses and occasional god - and breathed song into the air. But in the early '90s such ancestral vibrations would have meant nothing to me. I remember the food being cheap and cheerful, if a little dull, and the decor utilitarian - seem to remember tiles everywhere.
