Blog - A week in music

A week in music

I've been too busy to blog (how sad), but I've been to quite a bit of shows over the last week or so. So here's a summary of my recent outings.

Thursday, October 9 — naomi & goro

I had an excuse to leave work a bit early, and after getting my duties done I went to Ginza station just before 18:30 to catch a free show of naomi & goro. I had seen them in August at World Happiness, on the side stage, and they played some of the same songs to a large crowd packed in "Ginza no Oasis", an event space in the Hibiya line concourse. I liked the contrast of soft bossa nova with the noises from the busy station, people running to catch their train.

One unfortunate thing was that a station staff whose job was to tell people not not stand behind the yellow line. Instead of using some tact and telling those people quietly, he chose to scream at the top of his lungs. He must have got some very cold glances as after a song or two he got a bit calmer, even the band couldn't help but notice him.

Otherwise, a very nice show. :) Sorry for my bad photo.

Friday, October 10 — Sonore 10th Anniversary

I went to my friend Franck's label Sonore's 10th Anniversary held at SuperDeluxe. The event started at 19:30 so it was one of those days where I had to rush from work.

Hosaka Akane was playing first and I arrived just after she had started. She sat in the dark, playing a solo set of recent songs and a few older ones. A nice surprise was that she also sang some vocals on one song! A great show as always.

Next up was YMCK, who I had last seen at their Family Kanshasai in August. This time was a more down-to-earth set without so many toys, but it had been a long time since I could seem them so closely and even see Midori's footsteps. Their best hit of the show was when they played their cover of Claude François' "Cette année là" which the French crowd received very warmly. Midori and Yokemura even danced some of Cloclo's moves provoking a lot of laughter, those moved were carefully recreated in 8-bit fashion in their video.

Next was Baby Q, a group of about 10 doing eccentric contemporary dance, with twitching body parts, lots of running and falling and crashing against the wall. They were accompanied by video and music ranging from breakbeats to glitchy noise.

The stage was then set up for Asa-chang & Junray, surrounded by blacklight and with their mysterious blue mixer (a sort of beefed-up Buddha Machine) sitting in the center. They played tabla, other percussions and also trumpet and horn. I was mostly impressed by U-Zhaan's super-fast tabla play.

Last was Doddodo, a girl from Osaka with some samplers and a cracked voice. She played her gear while shouting loud rhymes, sometimes leaving the stage to run through the crowd. As I watched her I thought "gotta tell Digiki!" and then I looked over at the people dancing and sure enough he was there, of course. :)

All of these artists are set to perform at LEX 2009, a festival to be held in Nîmes, France next March.

Saturday, October 11 — GMT 2008 & Diesel XXX

On Saturday I met my friend Tsugumi at Makuhari Messe, it was my first time there (except that I had been at the nearby outlets). We were there for two things, but first to check out GMT 2008, a game music related event part of Tokyo Game Show.

We got there in time for a set by GhM Sound Team, a band of game music creators from Grasshopper Manufacture, who performed songs that they wrote for recent games. I knew none of them, but I liked the concept of game music being played by a full band. They were quite good too!

Then, I think there was a Tenori-on demonstration. That's also around then our friend Fukuta-san found us, he was also watching the show from the back.

Next on stage was YMCK! I had just seen them the night before, but I was definitely in the mood for more. They gave an awesome intro with a special song and video that they made for Tokyo Game Show. That was just great! The rest of the show went a bit in fast-forward as they tried to speak between each song but a technical problem moved them to the next right away. Great show anyway, and of course this audience loved them!

Asia Engineer were then on stage. I was a bit interested from their recent collaboration with Nomoto Karia, but even though they're sold as a rap group I was rather disappointed by the lack of rapping. They also talked too much. We sat down for most of it.

Next up was Scha Dara Parr! Now that's rap! It was the first time I saw them and they gave a kick ass show! The three were accompanied by Robochu of Dassen 3. I was really happy to hear a few songs that I knew from their latest album "CON10PO" (2006) that I love, such as "BD hatsugen" and "Disco System". They also played "Game Boy", an older song that they said they were only singing for this game-related event.

Last up was talent Nakakawa Shōko aka Shoko-tan, but we only stayed for about a song to see how cute she was and then we left.

On my way out I couldn't help but get a Scha Dara Parr T-shirt, like all the band's members were wearing. Really cool design of twisted katakana!

It was now about 21:00, all three of us went to eat at Tony Roma's at the mall near the station before Tsugumi and I headed to electro party DIESEL XXX just next door! Now that's hashigo!

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DIESEL XXX (the XXX stands for 30th anniversary) was quite fun. There were 3 large rooms where different DJs or bands were always playing, so when we got tired of one we'd go to another room. It being techno, sometimes all three rooms did sound quite the same, but there were some good and refreshing stuff.

We got there around 22:30 and first watched a few minutes of Gus Gus at stage 1 who I used to really be into, but my tastes have changed and I wasn't so much interested anymore, so we went to enjoy The Martinez Brothers next door.

Around 23:00 we got back to stage 1 to see Mr. Oizo who was perched (!) on a huge structure. It was the first time I saw him and only knew that hit song from way back (not sure if he played it that night, maybe not while I was around), but anyway he did a quite cool set, throwing in some 80's classics which he all transformed into his distinct style by a tweak of buttons. He was accompanied by really cool VJing. We found my friend Sylvain with who we met on and off for the rest of the night.

Next door we hung around James Murphy & Pat Mahoney (of LCD Soundsystem, stage 2) quite a bit. They gave a disco set, so passing from loud techno to that always felt like a breeze. It's around that time that we met Antonin, I was seeing him for the 2nd day in a row and finally got to talk to him a little bit.

In that room were also located some chill-out tents, large white and round igloo-types with many large pillows inside. I'm sure some people slept during the whole show. :) It was nice that they thought of a place to rest.

2manydjs then played on stage 1 around that time but I checked a few times and it was too crowded. It was also around that time that we noticed some violent ones too... drunks fighting and others groping girls. We didn't stick around long.

Later though Soulwax did a great set, playing some new wave tracks (of which at least some were covers) as a full live band that was a lot of fun!

And at last A-Trak got on stage 1 (4:30)!! I had been most excited about his set, but I guess my attempts were too high. Perhaps part of his set was dedicated to scratch routines, but the parts I saw were almost non-scratch except for the occasional 30 sec. He would have started his set with a good chunk of routines and he'd have kept me, but after half-an-hour of relatively normal DJing, we were tired it was time to take the train back home. Oh well. At least I got to hear "Say Whoa" which kicks ass!

Wednesday, October 15 — Freesscape

Sylvain and I met again, this time at SuperDeluxe. I was actually supposed to meet my friend Peter there too, but when we got there we realized that we got the wrong day. We were really there to see Morgan's Organ, musician Morgan Fisher's monthly improvised show, but that was going to be Thursday. We were really confused as to how we could both have got the wrong weekday, and meanwhile the singer of Freesscape, the band playing that night, came to kindly invite us to stay anyway at a discount, which we accepted.

The show was good, trip-hop-ish electro tracks with female vocals, and really nice VJing that consisted of some 3D computer graphics using 3 projectors. I was also happy that they used the Tenori-on throughout the show. I had seen it at a gallery, and also demonstrated at the GMT 2008 (above), but it was the first time I saw it used seriously as an instrument.

Also, as a really strange coincidence, Morgan Fisher, the guy who we first intended to go see, joined Freesscape on piano for a few songs. His playing was great, with parts really off-tempo and then getting back in the beat. I'll be looking forward to see his solo show sometime.

As for why we went on the wrong day, I thought later that it might have been because SuperDeluxe's calendar shows weeks that begin on Monday. Seeing the event right in the middle of the week I must have assumed that it was Wednesday. As a weak excuse, I believe that calendars with weeks that start on Monday aren't common in Japan.

Saturday, October 18 — Boy Meets Girl

My Australian friend Peter, who I couldn't meet at SuperDeluxe, came to Koenji for clubbing. The event was Boy Meets Girl, a regular Shibuya-kei DJ party that recently celebrated its 10th anniversary!

But first of all we went to Koenji Connection for a drink, the same place where I had DJ'd last month. Matsuno-san was DJing again and I was happy to also find friends Kanae and Mizue. We spent a little while there talking while listening to the good music.

Then we went to Club Roots for Boy Meets Girl. They played a great selection of Shibuya-kei related stuff and also 60's music, the latter that Peter knew a lot better than I did. Anyway pretty much each song made either of us go "oh!!" or "ah!!" :) All the people were very friendly too. We had a great time!

The next installment of Boy Meets Girl will be on December 20, and I was told that solange et delphine will play live! I'll have to check that out!

Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr (click the next dates for the rest)

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There will be more soon...!

Posted on October 23, 2008 at 00:46 | Tweet |

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