About Nijiumu

Nijiumu (滲有無) is a Japanese band featuring Keiji Haino, asahito nanjo (who left in 1990), Takashi Matsuoka and Shizuo Uchida. They create mysterious soundscapes mixing acoustic instruments, electronic treatments and Haino's vocals (this band shouldn't be confused with Haino's solo album "Nijiumu"). asahito nanjo (member of High Rise, Toho Sara) speaks about it in an interview previously published by Opprobrium: "Nijiumu concentrate on creating an atmosphere. There was no clear concept, sometimes we wouldn't even talk about what we were going to do. Nijiumu is like Fushitsusha in that it was started with the aim of doing something that no one else had thought of. It doesn't have any clear philosophy behind it. Who were the original members of Nijiumu? There were four of us - Matsuoka, Uchida, Haino and me. The first time we played Haino was on vocals, percussion and small ethnic instruments, I was on bass, Matsuoka on piano, and Uchida played bass and synthesized percussion. So there were a lot of electric instruments. We used to play once a week in Nerima for about three hours. After I left [in 1990], Nijiumu became more and more Haino's band." Discography: - "Era of sad wings" (PSF, 1993) - "Live" (from "Driftworks", a 4 CD boxset) - "Goodman, Tokyo, 27.1.1990" (Live bootleg, CD-R, An'Shitsu, no release date) A live bootleg of the band recorded in 1990; credited musicians : Keiji Haino, Asahito Nanjo, Shizuo Ushida, Takashi Matsuoka About other members of the band: - Uchida Shizuo, who played bass in Nijiumu has released an album in duo with Hasegawa Hirotomo : "gene packs", PSF PSFD-163 - Tetuzi Akiyama also played in Nijiumu (in 1994) according to an interview with him that can be read here or there. Recently Akiyama has a new improvised music project: Sutekina Tea Time, a duo with (ex?) Nijiumu member Takashi Matsuoka (guitar, vocal)