First off there was Shugo Tokumaru on Thursday. He was playing at the Liquid Room. I bought the ticket the second I heard about the show, but didn't really know the details of it. It turned out that there were only two acts, and Shugo was the first one. His show was stunning. I got his album earlier this year and just fell in love with his sound. He has the approach of a singer/song writer with his vocals and acoustic guitar as the centerpiece, but he surrounds his simple pieces with every manner of percussion, whistles, chimes, accordions, and toy pianos to create dense soundscapes that are just beautiful. He had four supporting musicians with him: a drummer and 3 multi instrumentalists. They played every small, handheld instrument you could think of, and had to follow sheet music for the entire show because there was so much going on. He also played the most amazing cover of Video Killed the Radio Star on banjo. Unfortunately, there was a security guy watching me like a hawk, so I have no pictures or videos from that night. I will just give some links instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FJ99ju9rfw
http://www.myspace.com/shugotokumaru
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubq3a1LScTw
So the real surprise for me was the fact that there was another band at the show who was the headliner. I had no idea who they were, but I realized that a large part of the crowd was there to see them. They were called Kicell (キセフ) and after researching them, they claim to be a post rock duo made up of two brothers. The set they played was more of a straight soft rock set. To be honest I found it a little boring, but their singing was excellent. It was a good thing I stuck around because halfway through the set, the backing drummer and keyboardist left the stage and then they switched to an acoustic guitar and music saw set up. I really enjoyed that part of the show more than the early part, as they accentuated the vocals, which were the best thing they had going on in my opinion. I even managed to understand a couple of their songs with my limited vocabulary (One about an aging lonely man and one love song). I'm going to have to check them out some more.
http://www.nidan-bed.com/english.html
Friday came in two parts. First there was a Alternative show with some other genres thrown in there as well.
The first band was called Highered-girl (above). They had the White Stripes set up with a girl drummer and a male guitarist. They went right into it with a wall of fuzz and furious drum fills (lots of energy in their playing). Some songs had noise aspects to them and were pretty hardcore, while others got very melodic. The vocal lines were well written on top of everything else.
http://www.myspace.com/higheredgirl
Next was You Got a Radio!. They were a new wave/early west-coast punk band. They were very reminiscent of X. The male and female guitarists doubled on vocals for a lot of songs. The bassist was wearing a tie and swaying all over the place. Really danceable stuff, but more than anything I noticed how well rehearsed and tight their whole show was. They also had one song towards the end that was intentionally dissonent which I enjoyed.
http://www.myspace.com/yougotaradio
The third act was called Poetry of Bathroom. This was a weird one. First you have a guitarist/singer, a bassist playing an acoustic bass guitar, and the most unobtrusive drummer I have ever heard. You take these three and you have a lo-fi, Velvet Underground style folk rock band. Now add into the mix a bassist with his strap between his legs, gloves, a German double bass bow, and a slide. This guy steals the show and totally morphs the sound into something noisy and trippy. On the last song, the guitarist joined the crazy bassist in his fun by shredding out some heavy distorted noise of his own.
http://www.myspace.com/poetryofbathroom
The last band I saw (there was actually one more, but I needed to stop by my apartment before the second part of my night) was called Condor44. They were an Alt. rock three piece with an open handed drummer. The best part of their performance was the fluidity. The set was continuous, and every song change and part change within a song was so smooth you couldn't notice it. They got very soft and decently heavy at different points but everything just transitioned perfectly. Their sound sometimes reminded me of Sebadoh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q_oo2J433Q
http://jp.myspace.com/condor44
After all of that (I must be insane) I went to another show that started at 12:30. This wasn't a rave like last week, but rather a legitimate show with electronic dance bands and dj in between each set. I took a lot of videos here because everyone seemed cool with it.
Nu Clear Classmate (above) was playing when I walked in. They were an electoclash duo who performed on the floor with the crowd around them. Heavy distorted guitar leads overlayed the electro drums and synth lines. They had balloons drop from the ceiling when they announced they would be releasing an E.P. in the near future. Some of their songs really reminded me of Dan Deacon's stuff.
http://www.myspace.com/nuclearclassmate
The next group was called AAPS. They had an experimental house sound. They would get some jazzy piano every once in a while like in the video above, or sometimes they would rock out (while still having a dance style). The keytarist played the bass lines and jumped out into the audience a few times.
http://www.myspace.com/tuneaaps
Up next was White Scooper. They played hard edged disco house with a lot of vocals and live bass and guitar. The genre was good mix of old and new sounds. I heard 80s and modern influences in the songs.
http://www.myspace.com/whitescooper
This band was the one that was most memorable for me out of the whole night. They are called The New House. I had seen them out on the dance floor and they seemed like cool guys. I didn't realized they were a band. They were like nothing else that evening. Almost entirely rock instrument based, the band was an indie rock/experimental group. The first thing I thought was these guys sound like an American band (all of the lyrics were in English). If you take a look at their myspace influences, you will see was on the money (also I have 80% of their influences on my ipod). Unfortunately their myspace recording do great injustice to what they sounded like live (the video is decent though). Their sound went in some cool directions. The second video is almost like Animal Collective (I think the singer reminded me of Avey Tear somewhat). Cool note: the rack toms of the drummer face outward for the rest of the band to play, he only uses floor tom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF8tD3T8BVU&feature=related
http://www.myspace.com/thenewhousetokyo
Saturday was the Acid Mothers Temple show in Akihabara. The club was cool and pretty crowded. Two guys were operating a liquid light/laser show the entire time. The opener was called Kinski.
They are a Seattle based Psych Rock band doing a tour in Japan right now. A four piece classic rock set up, they had that driving heavy sound, with steady pulsing bass and drums. They used the classic, warm fuzzbox sound on their guitars. They definitely were staying true to the rock aspect of psych rock.
http://www.myspace.com/kinskispace
Acid Mothers Temple, on the other hand, were Psychedelic in the fullest sense of the word. Old synths made spaced out hums and whistles, a variety of acoustic instruments made appearances, and the singer had mastered Tuvan throat singing. Other times, the whole band would just wail out with furious droning noise.
The experience was pretty intense. I forgot where I was from time to time and disappeared in my own thoughts. I caught their last song before the encore on video. This was the softest of their tunes, that ended with them all singing in eastern harmonies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUZL6wbxKok
http://www.myspace.com/acidmotherstemple
So didn't think that I could top the musical strangeness of the Acid Mothers Temple show. However, yesterday I was treated to insanity. I attended an Experimental music show featuring a bunch of artist on this collective label called Intervall-audio. It was a night of heavily artistic expression, the kind that reminds you that art has no definition, and music, therefore, does not have a set sound.
I had some trouble finding the place, but when I did get there Scriptones was playing. He was a field recorder/circuit bender. What this means is that he had a recordings from nature and cities that he maniplulated, while also created new connections on open circuit boards to create original sounds of popping static and noise. His music had a random uncontrollable factor to it, and he often would make a face when he stumbled upon a harsh sound he didn't like. I thought that it was awesome that his main way of manipulating the circuits by using his hands to make connections.
http://www.intervall-audio.com/artists/scriptones.html
For anyone unfamiliar with circuit bending here is a short explaination
I don't actually know the name of the next artist. He was not one of the featured names, and I haven't been able to dig him up anywhere yet. He was a guitarist who used the five pedals above to morph his extremely violent and fast guitar techiques to create a sonic spectrum of noise. It was all just so fast paced. The weirdest part was his use of the bass synthesizer pedal (pictured in the middle) which I myself have looked into. Using his guitar as the trigger, it would make random sweeping filter bass notes fall down to ranges outside of the guitar. He even grabbed an ashtray and used it as a slide and pick. Everyone there was blown away.
The big name of the evening was Philippe Chatelain, a Tokyo based French musician. He is the leader of the influential experimental group The Laptop Orchestra. Compared to the other two, his music was much more regular and rhythmic, though complrised almost entirely of white noise waves. He would bring in recorded music that he manipulated extensively. I was able to make out Billie Jean , likely a homage to the recently late artist. I made a video but it is taking way too long to download, so I give up. Maybe I will put it on Youtube.
http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~phhat99/
This was a really long post. I will try to space it out more in the future. If you read this whole thing you are a champ.
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