Blog - Enban Jamboree day 3: report
Enban Jamboree day 3: report
Over Golden Week was held Enban Jamboree, the annual(?) festival by Koenji CD shop/live space Enban, which was also celebrating its 5th anniversary. Enban has an important place in Tokyo's indies music scene. Being very small though, the festival isn't held at Enban but at O-Nest, a larger club in Shibuya that spans on two floors. This year the festival was 5-day long (from May 1 to 5), and we went to check out the 3rd day.
The event began at 17:00, and playing very first was electronic musician Hosaka Akane. She performed a very special set, as while she usually plays on her own with her laptop computer and a few synths, this time most of the music was performed live. She played 3 different Casios, a Roland TR-505 and some effects. Her friend DJ Peaky was there to help, playing a Korg and a turntable. The set of about 6 songs was a lot of fun, and ended with a brand new song featuring a squeaky blue bird puppet, that one will appear on her album "Niko Niko Denki Muzic" (remastered with bonus tracks) out next month on Sonore! Stay tuned.
Then we went to have a look downstairs, where is located the larger stage, but on the way there we found two large boxes of free 7"'s! That was going to be the place where to spend a few moments between shows. No great finds (as expected), but I ended up picking up some Hayami Yū, Paul Mauriat, and then some. Above was an exhibition of 7" sleeves with pandas, several songs that I recognized from the panda CD-R I had picked up at Enban a long time ago.
The stage downstairs wasn't yet ready, so we went back up and caught the end of a set by ホライズン山下宅配便 (Horaizun Yamashita takkyūbin), a really weird band with sometimes recorder or oboe, better played under an umbrella. The singer would take off his shoes and smell them. They were quite amazing though in that they sounded really tight and good! Fun stuff!
Back downstairs, we caught a performance by 久下恵生＋ユダヤジャズ (Kuge Yoshio w/ Yudaya Jazz), who sampled live drums on video and mix it all up on the spot with a bit of hip-hop flavor. Quite impressive!
Then was a really fun intermission by an old man named Hata Akio who showed reels of trains that he filmed in the mid 70's in Austria, all in color and the quality was quite good. He said that it was the first time in about 10 years that he watched them, and his tales were quite funny. Lots of bare-chested train conductors!
Next up on stage was Doravideo with Jon the Dog. Jon played her organ and sang while Doravideo played drums and projected old videos of Jon. I think that I saw in a caption that one was from 1993! Jon didn't have the amazing dog costume back then but instead a cheap cow outfit! On a TV interview the inevitable confrontation came: "That's not a dog, it's a cow!" to which she replied "No it's a white and black dog." Hilarious! The set ended with a p0rn video mix-up leaving everyone speechless.
In this segment artists were relaying, doing collaborations with each other, and Doravideo was replaced by a shamisen player, Yanagiya Koharu. They performed one of Jon's songs ("otoko no sekai, kawakudari"), and then a song where there shamisen lady sang while Jon danced. That was quite good and funny!
The relaying went on, but we left to go back upstairs and caught the end of a set by zuppa di pesce (whose CD we bought at the shop), and then a short theremin and Matryomin (a theremin inside of a Russian matryoshka doll) concert by Satō Sae. That was quite nice, and I especially liked a Russian song used in Tetris performed on the Matryomin, with an 8-bit backtrack! Nice touch!
Then I was getting a little bit hungry and had the good idea to order a hot dog, which took about 20 minutes to prepare...!? Meanwhile we watched a bit of Lake's show which was alright. Girl drummer Kitayama Yūko was great, it seems like she's active in a bunch of bands and I felt like I had seen her somewhere before although I couldn't figure out where.
Back downstairs we got a bit bored by a solo guitar player doing a hour-long set, and waited around there while checking the free 7"'s some more, until ヒゲの未亡人 (hige no mibōjin = La veuve moustachue). The set was part of what we had seen last December in Shimokitazawa, with video background and piano by Miura Yōko. Only some adlib bits and talk parts between the songs were different. La veuve moustachue is touring Europe very soon (May 15 in Rotterdam, 16 in Brussels, 21 in Paris), don't miss this fantastic one-man mustached widow musical!
I leave you with a rehearsal shot of "Les vacances de la veuve moustachue" as featured in this show.
Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr
Posted on May 12, 2008 at 22:53 | Tweet
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