Blog - InK live report
InK live report
On Friday night I went to see InK, the new unit of Ishino Takkyū (Denki Groove) and Kawanabe Hiroshi (Tokyo No.1 Soul Set). As soon as the curtains opened the crowd was in delight to see the fantastic stage on which stood a giant cassette tape, on top of which the two twiddled with their mixers.
The music ranged from up-beat techno to calm dub, and while about half of the songs played were instrumental, the rest had repetitive English lyrics sung by Takkyū. Aside from songs that will appear on the album, they played a cover of Inoue Yōsui's "koori no sekai" (井上揚水 「氷の世界」) which, sung in Japanese and with Takkyū's trademark nasal voice, was one of the most entertaining ones. Don't worry though, the original songs were also great, with lots of precise sounds, the type that make you notice different things everytime you listen.
The VJing by Ukawa Naohiro showed all kinds of animations using the logo cassettes, all very sharp and entertaining. He is also responsible for the visual works on Nomiya Maki's latest album, "Party People".
Usually, said "one man" shows (a show with only one band/artist playing) easily last about 2 hours, but InK being a brand new project and not even having an album out yet ("C-46" will be out on April 26), they ran out of material after about 10 songs. Takkyū excused themselves saying "at least you can say you've seen something rare!" They did come back for an encore, playing the song "Bassline" once again, as it's lately used in a Vodafone commercial. Then the curtains closed again, and as everyone was beginning to walk out, the curtains opened once more showing the two in front of their gigantic tape, waving goodbye as they left for good. The show that had started at 19:00, and featured over an hour of DJing by Moodman, ended already at about 21:30. Some of the audience seemed to think that was quite short, but I thought it was of good proportions.
Now I'm very much looking forward to the album!
Posted on April 2, 2006 at 20:52 | Tweet
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