Back in the early 90s when it was hard to find anyone who had even heard of Keiji Haino I called up Trevor Manwaring after seeing an advertisement in the The Wire that said that the company he worked for – Harmonia Mundi – were distributing the PSF label in the UK. At this point all I had to go on regarding Haino were some pictures of him wearing black wraparound shades in front of a wall of Marshall amps and breathless reviews like Travis Crawford’s (whatever happened to that guy?) take on Double Live in Forced Exposure. I would stare at the pictures and re-read the reviews, imagining Fushitsusha as sounding something like Ash Ra Tempel or Walter Wegmuller’s Tarot, which for me back then was the pinnacle of psychedelic excess. It turned out that Trevor was as much of a nut for wild outside sounds as myself, and in fact was on a mission to try to get this stuff into the shops and onto people’s radar. He turned me on to so much stuff, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Beefheart boots, Marzette Watts on Savoy, Tisziji Munoz, Rallizes, SME’s Karyobin and he put out a bunch of great sides on his own Paratactile label, including major albums from Fushitsusha and Keiji Haino. Between the two of us we funded, promoted and tour managed the first Musica Transonic/Mainliner/Toho Sara UK tour, with a Glasgow date that saw Toho Sara joined by Richard Youngs on violin. Back then it was still possible to feel like you were part of an isolated group of record nuts, trading information on new music and filling in holes in discographies, hunting down the wildest undiscovered sides. Anyway, the point of all this is that one morning Trevor calls me up and he is raving about a CD issue of this never before released album by Love Cry Want, aka drummer/moog synth player Joe Gallivan, guitarist Nicholas, drummer Jimmy Molneiri and Hammond organist Larry Young. I knew Larry Young from the records he had made as part of The Tony Williams Lifetime alongside John McLaughlin. I was a huge fan of their Emergency! album except I couldn’t stand Tony’s vocals or his dud lyrics. Love Cry Want is like Lifetime with alla the bad vocals taken out, Trevor insisted, and with Keiji Haino on guitar. I was sold from the first track. Trevor passed away in 2004 but every time I play Love Cry Want I think of him and how this album stood for everything that he believed in back then. I can imagine how excited he would be to see it finally coming out on vinyl.
These 1972 recordings were deemed too far out for any record label at the time, with the result that they languished in the vaults until the CD edition came out in 1997. The group play a form of jazz that is a true ‘fusion’ while avoiding all of the tedious displays of technique and endless noodling that would come to be associated with the genre. This is free jazz overdosed on electricity, with Nicholas playing a prototype guitar synthesizer that makes him sound like Masayuki Takayanagi, tearing squealing single notes from a torrent of fuzz while Young responds with solid clusters of keys, Gallivan drops some quicksilver moog and Molneiri levitates the whole thing over the top. This LP points towards a future amalgam of energised electricity and fluid afro jazz that barely exists today but that finds its echo in groups like the Flower-Corsano Duo (who Love Cry Want group often sound uncannily like), Last Exit and The Blue Humans. The reissue is beautifully packaged in a heavy duty colour gatefold sleeve with liners. It’s never sounded better. Highly recommended.