Blog - Denki Groove live report
Denki Groove live report
Last night I went with Tsugumi to see Denki Groove live at Liquid Room. It was their first one-man live since 2000, needless to say it sold out very quickly. Thanks to my foreseeing and cut & paste tactic, I had been lucky to be able to buy tickets at Liquid Room's pre-sale that closed in about 2 minutes!
After eating udon at a nearby place, we got to Liquid Room a bit before 20:00 and entered the packed lobby where several hundreds were waiting for the doors to open. We had rather bad numbers, in the 440's (no offence to DJ 440!), so we had to wait for a long while in the terribly hot place, we knew that it would be worse once we got down to the concert space though.
When we finally entered, Tanaka Fumiya was DJing while VJ Ukawa Naohiro prepared with his bunch of videotapes while smoking. I'm not so much into techno DJing, and that's probably why Tanaka's set sounded all the same to me from beginning to end.
Those who are going to see Denki Groove at Fuji Rock may prefer to stop reading here.
At about 21:00, Denki Groove got on stage, at first Ishino Takkyū and support Kagami, both at the tables at the back, and then Pierre Taki made his entrance, wearing a green polo shirt. The set started with "N.O.", followed by "Nothing's Gonna Change", "Shangri-La" and "Flashback Disco"! That was enough hits to drive the crowd crazy right from the start. Then they played a few songs that sounded brand new, one that went "I've tried to open your eyes... so many times". Taki remained at the front dancing and leading the crowd —something he's really a master at... pretty much any move he does is immediately imitated by the crowd— and Takkyū alternated from the tables to the front for singing his parts. At the tables, along with his mixers, Takkyū also played some live electronic percussions.
And then, I don't really remember the order of things, but among the songs played were "kakko ii Jumper", "Asunaro Sunshine", "Fuji-san" (with lots of smoke blown from every side of the stage), "hikenai Guitar o hikun da ze" and several others. While the show was mostly surprise-less (no crazy props), there was one song for which two robotic dancers joined Taki on stage for choreographed moves.
Nearing the end, the last song played was "niji" after which they left the stage. They did come back for an encore, but Takkyū said that it was the first time ever Denki Groove did an encore. He explained it saying that nowadays it not cool anymore to leave without doing an encore. Pierre Taki seemed determined, repeatedly saying 「俺やるぞ！」 ("I'll take care of it!"). He sang some enka-ish song and then they closed with Takkyū's "Stereo Nights".
Ukawa Naohiro is quite a special VJ. While nowadays most VJs use a laptop computer, he prefers to have a bunch of VHS tapes containing his prepared video and a pile of about 4 VCRs, and madly flick his video mixer's controls. And he wears a cowboy hat too! The result is nevertheless very actual, and he's much more fun to watch than the laptop guys.
According to a recent Ishino Takkyū interview in Sound & Recording Magazine, Denki Groove should have a new album out this year, it would be the first original album since "VOXXX" (2000).
Update: Here's the complete set list, courtesy of someone with a good memory on Mixi.
N.O. / Nothing's Gonna Change / Shangri-La / Flashback Disco / New song / New song / hikenai Guitar o hikun da ze / Volcanic Drumbeats / kakko ii Jumper / Smileless Smile / shinkansen / Asunaro Sunshine / Reactio-n / Fuji-san / niji
Encore: Jumbo tanishi / Stereo Nights
Posted on July 25, 2006 at 12:55 | Tweet
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