Keiji Haino, born in Chiba in 1952 and long resident in Tokyo, is a musician whose work has passed through rock, free improvisation, noise, singer-songwriter forms, solo percussion, psychedelia, minimalism and drone, always in a black-clad, white-haired silhouette that is unmistakable on stage. He was shaped early by Antonin Artaud and by the blues, and treats every performance as a rite. Active since the 1970s, he led the power trio Fushitsusha, whose crushing volume and long silences made it legendary, and has since worked in countless settings with Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Jim O'Rourke and many others.