Who: Makoto Oshiro
What: Homemade instruments, automatic sound, assorted awesomeness
Where: What follows below is partially a review of a specific concert at fttari
Well?
I suspect the reason that I haven't covered Makoto's stuff here so far is that he's doing a lot of the things I'm interested in and doing them so well that it almost hurts to think about it too much. Last night (2013/01/20) he played an absolute treasure of a set at fttari that confirmed my feelings, and also confirmed the fact that when he's on form, he's one of the best experimental music artists working in Tokyo right now. Indeed, I really felt that the live recording session (for a release on the fttari label), which was attended by just three audience members, was among the top experimental music concerts I've seen. It was certainly more compelling than all but the very best concerts I've seen by the senior statesmen of the field, of any nationality.
Because this is going to be (or is already) quite a gushy review, I'll start with some qualifiers: it's arguable that most of what Makoto is doing is based conceptually on things others have done before. Dephasing tickers, circulating feedback, bass speakers throwing pieces of metal around: I've seen and heard all of these before. (However, I'm not sure if there's a precedent for his amazing "fan in a jar" instrument -- see the description below. If not, I suggest we name it the Oshiro fan organ, or something). The point is really that Makoto's realization (with almost 100% homemade gear) and exectution of these concepts is excellent and totally compelling.
He started his set off with a number of clicking devices. I think they're made from relays and some kind of timer chip. The result is a compact device whose frequency can be tuned and the fairly large motion of the relay arm means that the sound couples well to whatever its placed on, something you wouldn't expect of a kitchen timer or some of the other devices people use to make dephased oscillator soundscapes. The clickers were placed on, various objects (including plastic tuppaware containers) adding an extra acoustic richness to the simple clicks. This is the kind of music that's certainly best enjoyed in a small room with a small audience. It was easy to enjoy the gradually shifting rhythms set up by the clickers in the dimly lit quiet of fttari.
Another standout moment was when he turned up the frequency so that the clicks became buzzing tones. The clickers were loaded into a container where they generated beat frequencies and other spectral phenomena on top of their simple tones. Makoto modulated the sonic miasma by lifting and closing a lid on the container. Simple in principle, but rich in practice. As with all good experimental music, it also forced the listener to contemplate the natures of sound and music themselves. The dichotomy of rhythm and tone in particular was beautifully demonstrated.
The second set involved the above-mentioned fan-in-a-jar instrument. Small cooling fans had been mounted into variously shaped glass jars. Above each jar, suspended on a string, was an asymmetrically shaped shell or other hard object.
Makoto had made each fan operable by a push button switch, and the switches were arranged in a pannel before him. When he pressed a switch, a fan somewhere in one of the 7 jars would gently spin into action. Gradually, the resultant air current would stir the shell pendulum into motion, its oscillations graually increasing inside until it hit the side of the glass jar. Due to the irregular shape of the shell, hitting the side of the jar would cause it to rotate resulting in a complicated (chaotic?) motion and thus a complicated rhythm on top of the natural rhythmic frequency caused by the pendulum itself. It was a beautiful combination of natural motion and caused motion, with the will of the operator being imposed from a distance and with minimal ability to actually control the resultant sound.
The final treat of the night involved Makoto's well known "teppan" or sheet metal instrument, a beautiful looking and ingeniously constructed self driving oscillator, which was one of the first things he became known for in Tokyo aside from his previous video/sound work. The instrument consists of a sheel of metal fastened by four bolts to a wooden resonator. The resonator can be driven by a speaker capable of generating power even at low frequencies (a kind of actuator I suppose). By selectively channeling vibrations on the surface of the sheet through a pickup mic, through an amp and finally to the speaker/resonator, Makoto can set up a self driving, shifting feedback pattern. Tonight, he had this whole system coupled to another large speaker by a spring. The feedback signal could also be fed to this speaker which had a fabulous low frequency response, causing it to crawl along the floor as it vibrated (I believe this is a trick used by Tokyoites Motallica as well) and thow up large washers which had been placed in its cone. The washers hit the spring randomly, resulting in further complexifying of the audio signal. It can be a challenge to produce interesting sounds from combined acoustic/electronic feedback loops, as you have to make sure one frequency of feedback doesn't run away an dominate everything, and you also need the feedback to be working on a number of different frequency scales including shifts over many tens of seconds if you want to create a truly interesting, self-generating sound pattern. Makoto's performance was a real master-class in this kind of feedback loop based sound generation, better than anything else I can remember hearing in the genre.
It was one of those experimental music concerts where everything works naturally and delightfully and you remember why it was that you started listening to this kind of music in the first place. Alongside Madoka Kono's forthcoming CD, Makoto's release is definitely long overdue and worth picking up when it comes out. It's great to see the inventive new blood in the improvised music from Japan scene finally having their recordings released.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Venue: fttari, Suidobashi
Improvised music from japan has long had a cd shop associated with it but not much of a physical presence. That has changed with the establishment of a cd store and venue at Suidobashi near the heart of the heartless city of Tokyo. It's been open for a few months now but I hadn't found time to go until last night. Hearing that audio cable geek supreme Toshimaru Nakamura had designed the sound system and Tetuzi Akiyama had done the decorations intrigued me, and the lineup of Madoka Kono, Jusei and Yosuke Morone (諸根陽介) last night promised a classic Japan Improv. Experience.
The new store/venue at Suidobashi is called fttari, the same name as the label run by IMFJ head honcho Yoshiyuki Suzuki. The shop is a mere 5 minutes from Suidobashi station in the basement of a nondescript building down a sidestreet, all details which could describe any number of small Tokyo venues. Fttari does have a warmth to it that many small spaces lack, though, created by the clear segregation between a bright CD store space and a clean, black performance space.
Tall, skinny, expensive looking Bose speakers project the mid and high frequencies into the audience while the bass is handled by some freaky looking woofers at the base of the speaker columns. I know nothing about mid to high end audio, but it looked promising. It's certainly the first time I've seen a speaker system which could be snapped in two during a good bar fight. Evidence of Akiyama-san's "decorations" was thin, but if he's behind the solid paint work on the walls, I commend him.
When listening to intermittent sine waves, sitting on a hard, low stool is part of the authentic Japan Improv experience. So when I sat down, I was surprised to find that my chair was relatively comfortable. That was the first clue that tonight would offer a counter example to the usual IMFJ theme of art as suffering. The second clue was Madoka and Sei singing a duet in the first movement of the night - I'm guessing it was an 80's J-pop cover but don't quote me on that. If the tape players ever break down, or the feedback loses its squeal, Madoka might have another avenue open to her. She could at least lay down some pretty nice B.V.s. The rest of the night continued in this eclectic vein. Ju sei's Jun alone veered between J. Pop, thrash metal and extended guitar sounds and also delivered one of his rare rap performances over the top of some west coast hip hop playing tinnily from his i-phone.
Yup, it was a kitchen-sinker, but the periods of unadulterated "serious" improv were among the best I've heard from these guys.
The times when things collapsed down to a Madoka/Yosuke duo were particularly good in terms of density of sound and clarity of concept. Madoka abandoned her usual tasteful restraint and pushed some mean air around. At one stage Yosuke had an ostensible joke solo in the middle of one of the pop songs (Sei (taking a break from waving her arms around): "Morone-san solo!") where he generated some of the creamy-smoothest white noise I've ever heard.
Ju-sei's progressive pop continues on it's journey into ever more baroque territory. Their new "Kome-tsubu" song (米粒 - a grain of rice) starts out as what seems like an improv game where Jun roams the fretboard until Sei pounces on him with a chant of "kome-tsubu" which he backs up with a repeated refrain on his guitar. (Having seen it twice, I'm pretty sure it's not a game, but a set in stone composition, which kind of makes my head hurt). The "song" then diverges into about four sub songs, all of them with their own charms and hooks before eventually coming back to grains of rice... Paul McCartney and Wings eat your heart out.
I have to imagine that this is the liveliest night that fttari has seen. The elder statesmen of Tokyo improv. aren't shy of cracking the odd musical joke, but they'll often form an entirely separate project in order to show that side of themselves (see Taku Unami （宇波拓）and Hose). Indeed, fttari as a label is for me tied to the meditative, hard edged style of playing, and I'm a little wary when the youngsters mix it up; am I just listening to a big in-joke? Then again, depending on who you ask this whole scene is an in-joke. Whatever the intellectual implications, in terms of pure enjoyment, this concert was a winner for sure.
Returning to fttari as a space, the sound and the sound placement are definitely well above average. Ftarri is probably the best place in Tokyo to listen to slightly detuned sine waves ( Yosoke uses scientific grade generators to make his, so he has a special place in my heart). The sheer density of different modes of sound as I moved my head around was impressive. The bass is also clear and heavy, without being overwhelming. Nice job Mr Nakamura! I'm definitely looking forward to hearing a whole lot more music there.
The new store/venue at Suidobashi is called fttari, the same name as the label run by IMFJ head honcho Yoshiyuki Suzuki. The shop is a mere 5 minutes from Suidobashi station in the basement of a nondescript building down a sidestreet, all details which could describe any number of small Tokyo venues. Fttari does have a warmth to it that many small spaces lack, though, created by the clear segregation between a bright CD store space and a clean, black performance space.
Tall, skinny, expensive looking Bose speakers project the mid and high frequencies into the audience while the bass is handled by some freaky looking woofers at the base of the speaker columns. I know nothing about mid to high end audio, but it looked promising. It's certainly the first time I've seen a speaker system which could be snapped in two during a good bar fight. Evidence of Akiyama-san's "decorations" was thin, but if he's behind the solid paint work on the walls, I commend him.
When listening to intermittent sine waves, sitting on a hard, low stool is part of the authentic Japan Improv experience. So when I sat down, I was surprised to find that my chair was relatively comfortable. That was the first clue that tonight would offer a counter example to the usual IMFJ theme of art as suffering. The second clue was Madoka and Sei singing a duet in the first movement of the night - I'm guessing it was an 80's J-pop cover but don't quote me on that. If the tape players ever break down, or the feedback loses its squeal, Madoka might have another avenue open to her. She could at least lay down some pretty nice B.V.s. The rest of the night continued in this eclectic vein. Ju sei's Jun alone veered between J. Pop, thrash metal and extended guitar sounds and also delivered one of his rare rap performances over the top of some west coast hip hop playing tinnily from his i-phone.
Yup, it was a kitchen-sinker, but the periods of unadulterated "serious" improv were among the best I've heard from these guys.
The times when things collapsed down to a Madoka/Yosuke duo were particularly good in terms of density of sound and clarity of concept. Madoka abandoned her usual tasteful restraint and pushed some mean air around. At one stage Yosuke had an ostensible joke solo in the middle of one of the pop songs (Sei (taking a break from waving her arms around): "Morone-san solo!") where he generated some of the creamy-smoothest white noise I've ever heard.
Ju-sei's progressive pop continues on it's journey into ever more baroque territory. Their new "Kome-tsubu" song (米粒 - a grain of rice) starts out as what seems like an improv game where Jun roams the fretboard until Sei pounces on him with a chant of "kome-tsubu" which he backs up with a repeated refrain on his guitar. (Having seen it twice, I'm pretty sure it's not a game, but a set in stone composition, which kind of makes my head hurt). The "song" then diverges into about four sub songs, all of them with their own charms and hooks before eventually coming back to grains of rice... Paul McCartney and Wings eat your heart out.
I have to imagine that this is the liveliest night that fttari has seen. The elder statesmen of Tokyo improv. aren't shy of cracking the odd musical joke, but they'll often form an entirely separate project in order to show that side of themselves (see Taku Unami （宇波拓）and Hose). Indeed, fttari as a label is for me tied to the meditative, hard edged style of playing, and I'm a little wary when the youngsters mix it up; am I just listening to a big in-joke? Then again, depending on who you ask this whole scene is an in-joke. Whatever the intellectual implications, in terms of pure enjoyment, this concert was a winner for sure.
Returning to fttari as a space, the sound and the sound placement are definitely well above average. Ftarri is probably the best place in Tokyo to listen to slightly detuned sine waves ( Yosoke uses scientific grade generators to make his, so he has a special place in my heart). The sheer density of different modes of sound as I moved my head around was impressive. The bass is also clear and heavy, without being overwhelming. Nice job Mr Nakamura! I'm definitely looking forward to hearing a whole lot more music there.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Final comment on Enban Summer Festival
I'll skip the customary header, as this is well overdue. Unfortunately, I couldn't commit my thoughts on the 2nd day of the Enban summer festival to blog due to an embarassing lack of knowledge about the performers I wanted to write about. I haven't been able to get in touch with Taguchi-san to ask him about the artists in question (partially due to circumstances explained below) so I'll simply frame the review of the second day as a series of questions about the performers.
1. What is the name of the woman who writes the grotesque/erotic visual stories which feature at Enban events every year? Did they have to rehearse much to get an entire band to play along with her this time? What traditional Japanese story-telling form is her performance based on? Did this year's performance feature her most shocking image so far? There was an audible gasp from the audience as she turned the page to show a lovingly rendered drawing of pre-coital female nether-regions.
2. What was the name of the guy who I thought was merely the token crazy old guy of the festival, but who turned out to be the most unhinged performer of the day? Is Debu-debu the name of his band? Was the bored looking guitar player in the band his daughter? Why does "Debu-debu love nothing" as he chanted for several minutes in what was presumably the band theme song? Has anyone else done the chilly bin as a kick drum thing before? If not, it was a pretty awesome invention, albeit a short lived one...
3. What is the name of the guy who does insane rants with wild gesticulations over a background of odd electronica? Did he rehearse his violent duo with Enban-owner Taguchi-san, where he pullse Taguchi's hair while forcing him to make rapid fire sketches on various themes? When exactly in that performance was Taguchi-san's right arm broken? Is Taguchi-san right handed? Because that would explain why he's not replying to my emails at the moment...
If I find the answers to any of the above questions, I'll fill them in later.
1. What is the name of the woman who writes the grotesque/erotic visual stories which feature at Enban events every year? Did they have to rehearse much to get an entire band to play along with her this time? What traditional Japanese story-telling form is her performance based on? Did this year's performance feature her most shocking image so far? There was an audible gasp from the audience as she turned the page to show a lovingly rendered drawing of pre-coital female nether-regions.
2. What was the name of the guy who I thought was merely the token crazy old guy of the festival, but who turned out to be the most unhinged performer of the day? Is Debu-debu the name of his band? Was the bored looking guitar player in the band his daughter? Why does "Debu-debu love nothing" as he chanted for several minutes in what was presumably the band theme song? Has anyone else done the chilly bin as a kick drum thing before? If not, it was a pretty awesome invention, albeit a short lived one...
3. What is the name of the guy who does insane rants with wild gesticulations over a background of odd electronica? Did he rehearse his violent duo with Enban-owner Taguchi-san, where he pullse Taguchi's hair while forcing him to make rapid fire sketches on various themes? When exactly in that performance was Taguchi-san's right arm broken? Is Taguchi-san right handed? Because that would explain why he's not replying to my emails at the moment...
If I find the answers to any of the above questions, I'll fill them in later.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Special #2: Reports from the Enban Summer Festival. Day 1, #2: Takahiro Hirama (平間貴大)
Who: 平間貴大 (Takahiro Hirama)
Well?
Ever since I moved to Tokyo, I've seen Hirama-kun making trouble wherever he goes. Frying the transistors of the Fender amp at Enban, injecting drum machine presets into delicate improvised textures at Grid 605 (that was during his drum machine phase), throwing stones at a pile of tapes as Madoka Kono made sophisticated casette player drones, somehow failing to play his own CD from a CD player at the release party for said CD, frustrating the audience with misdirection in a prepared guitar performance where he merely turned the amp of an on. I could go on.
And yet his constant inventiveness means that occasionally, he turns out an absolute gem of a performance which a less frustrating artist could probably never realize. His standout show to my mind was when he brought a sheet of glass, a wedge, a handheld plastic fan and a pack of cotton buds to Enban. He proceeded to balance the glass sheet on the wedge, taped the fan beneath the glass and then threw the cotton buds one by one on to the glass. At first nothing happened, but the laws of probability dictated that one side of the glass would eventually accumulate more cotton buds than the other. When this tipping point was reached, the glass started to rock on the wedge until it hit the fan producing a sharp buzzing noise once each oscillation. In my opinion, the performance was really a master class in minimal music. The concept was clear, the materials limited, the time was set by the finite number of cotton buds in the pack. And yet the sound produced was complex.
Lately, Hirama has been turning more to computerised sound sources. His performance at the Enban summer festival on Saturday consisted of running the word "no" through the Google translate speech generator for a number of different languages. The 6th floor lounge of O-nest was filled with layers of synthesized voices, coming in and out of phase as the successive "no"s, "non"s, "nein"s, etc, were translated. It was definitely one of his more musical performances.
This youtube link from a recording of a performance at the now defunct loopline is fairly representative of his style, but there are a number of clips of Hirama on line, some of them dealing with his involvement in the New Methodist Art Group (no relation to the Christian denomination).
Well?
Ever since I moved to Tokyo, I've seen Hirama-kun making trouble wherever he goes. Frying the transistors of the Fender amp at Enban, injecting drum machine presets into delicate improvised textures at Grid 605 (that was during his drum machine phase), throwing stones at a pile of tapes as Madoka Kono made sophisticated casette player drones, somehow failing to play his own CD from a CD player at the release party for said CD, frustrating the audience with misdirection in a prepared guitar performance where he merely turned the amp of an on. I could go on.
And yet his constant inventiveness means that occasionally, he turns out an absolute gem of a performance which a less frustrating artist could probably never realize. His standout show to my mind was when he brought a sheet of glass, a wedge, a handheld plastic fan and a pack of cotton buds to Enban. He proceeded to balance the glass sheet on the wedge, taped the fan beneath the glass and then threw the cotton buds one by one on to the glass. At first nothing happened, but the laws of probability dictated that one side of the glass would eventually accumulate more cotton buds than the other. When this tipping point was reached, the glass started to rock on the wedge until it hit the fan producing a sharp buzzing noise once each oscillation. In my opinion, the performance was really a master class in minimal music. The concept was clear, the materials limited, the time was set by the finite number of cotton buds in the pack. And yet the sound produced was complex.
Lately, Hirama has been turning more to computerised sound sources. His performance at the Enban summer festival on Saturday consisted of running the word "no" through the Google translate speech generator for a number of different languages. The 6th floor lounge of O-nest was filled with layers of synthesized voices, coming in and out of phase as the successive "no"s, "non"s, "nein"s, etc, were translated. It was definitely one of his more musical performances.
This youtube link from a recording of a performance at the now defunct loopline is fairly representative of his style, but there are a number of clips of Hirama on line, some of them dealing with his involvement in the New Methodist Art Group (no relation to the Christian denomination).
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Special #2: Reports from the Enban Summer Festival. Day 1, #1: MARK
Who: MARK
What: Harrowing songs from Tokyo's most horrible vocal cords
Well?
Let's get the sexist bullshit out of the way. There's nothing "cute" about MARK. She's a relatively unfetching Tokyo gal, singing horribly and at length about life and love. Also, despite my limited Japanese ability, I get the feeling that her lyrics are sometimes incoherent. There's no possibility of attaching some "cute Japanese girl doing noise" fetish to her.
(Honestly, I feel shitty even bringing up issues of gender and attractiveness when writing about music, but it's *a thing*, especially when so many of the fans of weird Japanese music are white men, so I can't help but feel it's worth noting that MARK exists outside that world.)
I distinctly remember the first time I heard MARK's voice, in a music store/venue in Ochanomizu. I didn't realize that the shows on the second floor were piped through to the first floor music store P.A. I'm ashamed to admit my superficial reaction now, but as I heard the decidedly non-dulcet tones of her voice come on after a series of unremarkable J-indies tracks, I felt like I'd discovered some unknown "outsider" music from Japan's past, and I went to ask the staff what CD they were playing. As it turned out, there was no CD and the music was very much in the present being performed on the second floor by a 20-something girl with the stage name MARK. At that performance, she had a backing duo on keyboard and bass, who seemed to be snickering at her as she hacked her way through lengthy original ballads.
MARK's performance in the 6th floor lounge for the Enban summer festival was a solo one, but the sense that people were snickering remained, with some incredulous audience members clearly catching MARK for the first time, and unsure of how to react.
MARK's music faces the same objections that all "outsider" music (Taguchi-san chose to use the word "cult" to describe her in the Festival notes) faces - the charge that she is in some sense "putting it on", that she's singing terribly on purpose to attract attention. Personally, I don't think it matters one way or another. To me Mark's ear-hurting vocals and generally unseductive music suggest the human fear of being unlovable and not entirely blameless for being unlovable.
I should point out that this is just my spin on MARK. She clearly had admirers and friends among the audience at the summer festival (heck, I'm one of the former) and I wouldn't want to leave the reader with the impression that she's some abused joke of the Tokyo scene. Given the fact that she's a competent guitarist and pianist as well, it's clear that she knows what she's doing to the music when she throws her vocals into the mix. However calculated it may be, I still find something brave about her willingness to present such an ugly sound to an audience which largely had no idea what to expect.
What: Harrowing songs from Tokyo's most horrible vocal cords
Well?
Let's get the sexist bullshit out of the way. There's nothing "cute" about MARK. She's a relatively unfetching Tokyo gal, singing horribly and at length about life and love. Also, despite my limited Japanese ability, I get the feeling that her lyrics are sometimes incoherent. There's no possibility of attaching some "cute Japanese girl doing noise" fetish to her.
(Honestly, I feel shitty even bringing up issues of gender and attractiveness when writing about music, but it's *a thing*, especially when so many of the fans of weird Japanese music are white men, so I can't help but feel it's worth noting that MARK exists outside that world.)
I distinctly remember the first time I heard MARK's voice, in a music store/venue in Ochanomizu. I didn't realize that the shows on the second floor were piped through to the first floor music store P.A. I'm ashamed to admit my superficial reaction now, but as I heard the decidedly non-dulcet tones of her voice come on after a series of unremarkable J-indies tracks, I felt like I'd discovered some unknown "outsider" music from Japan's past, and I went to ask the staff what CD they were playing. As it turned out, there was no CD and the music was very much in the present being performed on the second floor by a 20-something girl with the stage name MARK. At that performance, she had a backing duo on keyboard and bass, who seemed to be snickering at her as she hacked her way through lengthy original ballads.
MARK's performance in the 6th floor lounge for the Enban summer festival was a solo one, but the sense that people were snickering remained, with some incredulous audience members clearly catching MARK for the first time, and unsure of how to react.
MARK's music faces the same objections that all "outsider" music (Taguchi-san chose to use the word "cult" to describe her in the Festival notes) faces - the charge that she is in some sense "putting it on", that she's singing terribly on purpose to attract attention. Personally, I don't think it matters one way or another. To me Mark's ear-hurting vocals and generally unseductive music suggest the human fear of being unlovable and not entirely blameless for being unlovable.
I should point out that this is just my spin on MARK. She clearly had admirers and friends among the audience at the summer festival (heck, I'm one of the former) and I wouldn't want to leave the reader with the impression that she's some abused joke of the Tokyo scene. Given the fact that she's a competent guitarist and pianist as well, it's clear that she knows what she's doing to the music when she throws her vocals into the mix. However calculated it may be, I still find something brave about her willingness to present such an ugly sound to an audience which largely had no idea what to expect.
Special #2: Reports from the Enban summer festival (Acid Mother's Tennis Coats and Nisennenmondai)
What: Enban summer festival
Who: Acts from Tokyo, Kansai and beyond with a link to Enban
Where: Shibuya's O-nest: 5th and 6th floors
Well?
I'm not much of a summer festival guy. Somehow I don't think I'll ever make it to Fuji Rock (particularly if My Bloody Valentine's triumphant return couldn't drag me there a few years ago.) Even a day trip to Summer Sonic seems like too much work, and Loud Park's focus on New and Hair metal this year leaves me cold.
About the only summer festival I do regularly make it to is the Enban Jamboree - recently renamed "Enban Summer Festival" (did Taguchi-san finally catch on to the Boy Scout connotations of "jamboree"?)
The word "eclectic" may be overused, but any festival which includes psych legends Acid Mother's Temple (playing with The Tennis Coats!) along with unknown trouble-makers like Takahiro Hirama (平間貴大) deserves to be labelled so. I saw a bunch of compelling odd ball acts over the two days of the festival, particularly in the 6th floor lounge. For these relatively unknown bands, I'll do separate entries in the next day or two.
This blog is meant to focus on Tokyo music which has received little or no mention outside of Japan, but I can't resist briefly commenting here on two of the big acts who played the last day of the festival. Firstly, Nisennenmondai played a stunning set on Sunday night. It's the first time I've seen them using synthesizer instead of guitar, and I was surprised to find that I liked it better than their traditional guitar/bass/drums sound. Of course the rhythm section is still the same, so the sound is unmistakably nisennenmondai, but the substitution of synth for guitar arguably drags them even closer to a krautrock sound. After a long break from seeing them live, I was struck anew by their admirable economy of sound. The bass and drums lock tight in simple, poweful patterns which usually mutate gradually, but sometimes turn on a dime. Layered on top is the sound of a small synthesizer (perhaps merely a keyboard with some particularly choice patches) run through a single effect pedal producing a spectrum of sounds from twinkly arpeggios to all out drone. The crowd couldn't get enough of them, particularly as they only played two songs (albeit longform ones.)
The other big act to catch my attention was the unholy amalgam of Acid Mother's Temple and Tennis Coats whoch was dubbed "Acid Mother's Tennis Coats" for the night. Anyone who thought that Tennis Coats might prove a calming influence on the Acid Mothers was soon proven wrong. The performance was as ridiculously overblown as Nisennenmondai's was restrained. Tennis Coats allowed themselves to be absorbed into the Acid Mother's Temple sound, putting up little fight as their melodies were dissolved by reverb, and their song structures eroded by Makoto Kawabata's psych guitar attack. The sound was hardly the point though as the performance grew wilder towards the end. Clothes were shed (Mitsuru Tabata's "Jazz Belly" was on full display, as he traipsed through the 6th floor lounge in his undies straight after the show), and Kawabata's guitar was set on fire (admittedly only the showy, methylated spirits kind of fire), smashed to pieces and flung into the audience.
On another day, I might have groaned at their self-indulgent excess, but it all seemed appropriate on a Sunday night in Tokyo in the sweltering summer heat.
Who: Acts from Tokyo, Kansai and beyond with a link to Enban
Where: Shibuya's O-nest: 5th and 6th floors
Well?
I'm not much of a summer festival guy. Somehow I don't think I'll ever make it to Fuji Rock (particularly if My Bloody Valentine's triumphant return couldn't drag me there a few years ago.) Even a day trip to Summer Sonic seems like too much work, and Loud Park's focus on New and Hair metal this year leaves me cold.
About the only summer festival I do regularly make it to is the Enban Jamboree - recently renamed "Enban Summer Festival" (did Taguchi-san finally catch on to the Boy Scout connotations of "jamboree"?)
The word "eclectic" may be overused, but any festival which includes psych legends Acid Mother's Temple (playing with The Tennis Coats!) along with unknown trouble-makers like Takahiro Hirama (平間貴大) deserves to be labelled so. I saw a bunch of compelling odd ball acts over the two days of the festival, particularly in the 6th floor lounge. For these relatively unknown bands, I'll do separate entries in the next day or two.
This blog is meant to focus on Tokyo music which has received little or no mention outside of Japan, but I can't resist briefly commenting here on two of the big acts who played the last day of the festival. Firstly, Nisennenmondai played a stunning set on Sunday night. It's the first time I've seen them using synthesizer instead of guitar, and I was surprised to find that I liked it better than their traditional guitar/bass/drums sound. Of course the rhythm section is still the same, so the sound is unmistakably nisennenmondai, but the substitution of synth for guitar arguably drags them even closer to a krautrock sound. After a long break from seeing them live, I was struck anew by their admirable economy of sound. The bass and drums lock tight in simple, poweful patterns which usually mutate gradually, but sometimes turn on a dime. Layered on top is the sound of a small synthesizer (perhaps merely a keyboard with some particularly choice patches) run through a single effect pedal producing a spectrum of sounds from twinkly arpeggios to all out drone. The crowd couldn't get enough of them, particularly as they only played two songs (albeit longform ones.)
The other big act to catch my attention was the unholy amalgam of Acid Mother's Temple and Tennis Coats whoch was dubbed "Acid Mother's Tennis Coats" for the night. Anyone who thought that Tennis Coats might prove a calming influence on the Acid Mothers was soon proven wrong. The performance was as ridiculously overblown as Nisennenmondai's was restrained. Tennis Coats allowed themselves to be absorbed into the Acid Mother's Temple sound, putting up little fight as their melodies were dissolved by reverb, and their song structures eroded by Makoto Kawabata's psych guitar attack. The sound was hardly the point though as the performance grew wilder towards the end. Clothes were shed (Mitsuru Tabata's "Jazz Belly" was on full display, as he traipsed through the 6th floor lounge in his undies straight after the show), and Kawabata's guitar was set on fire (admittedly only the showy, methylated spirits kind of fire), smashed to pieces and flung into the audience.
On another day, I might have groaned at their self-indulgent excess, but it all seemed appropriate on a Sunday night in Tokyo in the sweltering summer heat.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
狂乱村 (Kyouran mura)
Who: 宇宙さん(uchu-san) (vocals) and 茄子さん (nasu-san) (drums)
What: Minimal girl punk duo
Well?
Kyouran mura translates to something like "Village of madness", and I personally think this duo of the oddly stage-named Uchu-san (lit. Ms. Outerspace) and Nasu-san (lit. Ms. Eggplant) are closer to madness than a lot of other willfully "odd" Japanese acts.
Nasu-san handles the drumming with an unschooled primitivism rarely found among Tokyo musicians. Over her hectic tom rolls, Uchu-san yells lyrics from the depths of despair only an overworked school administrator can know. There's nothing cute about this duo, and I'm happy to apply the over-used term "raw" to describe them.
There is a strange tension between the spiky Uchu-san and the amiable Nasu-san, which is one of the few things about their act which does seem to be managed. At one gig, Uchu spent a few uncomfortable minutes taking Nasu to task for getting married to her older salary man boyfriend because she felt sorry for him. She also
quizzed Nasu about her ring and how much it cost, seemingly bent on humiliating the Kyouran mura rythym section in public. However, when I quizzed them about this after the show, they just shrugged and said it was all part of the show.
The vocals are obviously 50% of the Kyouran mura sound and I can't always figure out what Uchu-san is on about. One song basically consists of her chanting "I don't need pot" (”はっぱは要らない!”) over and over again. (Might help you chill out! Just sayin'...) while another one consists of her apologizing to family members. Her vocal styling runs from straight up yelling to something more like the warbly crying of traditional Japanese music.
This youtube clip (from their regular joint at Muryoku Muzenji in Koenji) doesn't do them justice, but you get the basic idea.
What: Minimal girl punk duo
Well?
Kyouran mura translates to something like "Village of madness", and I personally think this duo of the oddly stage-named Uchu-san (lit. Ms. Outerspace) and Nasu-san (lit. Ms. Eggplant) are closer to madness than a lot of other willfully "odd" Japanese acts.
Nasu-san handles the drumming with an unschooled primitivism rarely found among Tokyo musicians. Over her hectic tom rolls, Uchu-san yells lyrics from the depths of despair only an overworked school administrator can know. There's nothing cute about this duo, and I'm happy to apply the over-used term "raw" to describe them.
There is a strange tension between the spiky Uchu-san and the amiable Nasu-san, which is one of the few things about their act which does seem to be managed. At one gig, Uchu spent a few uncomfortable minutes taking Nasu to task for getting married to her older salary man boyfriend because she felt sorry for him. She also
quizzed Nasu about her ring and how much it cost, seemingly bent on humiliating the Kyouran mura rythym section in public. However, when I quizzed them about this after the show, they just shrugged and said it was all part of the show.
The vocals are obviously 50% of the Kyouran mura sound and I can't always figure out what Uchu-san is on about. One song basically consists of her chanting "I don't need pot" (”はっぱは要らない!”) over and over again. (Might help you chill out! Just sayin'...) while another one consists of her apologizing to family members. Her vocal styling runs from straight up yelling to something more like the warbly crying of traditional Japanese music.
This youtube clip (from their regular joint at Muryoku Muzenji in Koenji) doesn't do them justice, but you get the basic idea.
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