My lord Music, I most humbly beg your indulgence in the hope that you will do me the honour of permitting this seed called Keiji Haino to be planted within you

This double LP (full title: My lord Music, I most humbly beg your indulgence in the hope that you will do me the honour of permitting this seed called Keiji Haino to be planted within you), recorded live at the L.A. performance space Zebulon in 2019, documents Haino’s continuing love of the hurdy-gurdy. Its nine untitled pieces, some as short as four minutes and others more than 11, rise and fall like waves, cresting but never crashing. There are many entirely instrumental tracks, making it mostly an exercise in drone, though he has truly become a virtuoso on the instrument in the quarter century he’s been playing it; on “B1” he creates a sound like a violin solo echoing out of the Carpathian mountains. The way he’s able to create multiple sounds at once with just one instrument — the hum and wail of the strings, a low sustained drone and a kind of staticky harmonic cloud, plus occasional percussive outbursts as he taps the strings — makes this performance utterly fascinating. The hour seems to pass like a dream, occasionally almost overwhelming in its emotional intensity.