I decided that this should be its own post

THE BIG STORY OF THE DAY is that I finally got to a Japanese Live (as in show). It was in this underground bar in Yoyogi called Zher the Zoo. It was a cosy little place with stone walls and hazy smoke filled air. I only caught the last two acts because my convenience store struggle set me back on time. The first (or rather second to last) was a singer songwriter on an electric from Osaka. Her name was Mai Mishio and she is originally from this band http://www.myspace.com/uzumibi. She had such control over the texture of her voice, sometimes being harsh and raspy while sometimes being soft and fleeting. The best part was that she had the same control over her guitar technique. My favorite parts of her set was whenever she would seamlessly transition any power in her voice into the guitar part, having the energies of the two dance between dominance and submission.

The headliner was a mainly instrumental three piece call Euphoria. They were a mix of alternative that became much more post rock towards the end of the show (generally a progressive song structure). They had an odd formula for the first couple of tunes. The guitarist would finger pick some intricate, moving arpeggio, and the rhythm section would just have at it, constantly shifting and morphing into new parts and rhythms. The drummer and bassist were pretty fantastic (drum fills everywhere and the bassist was all over the neck), so the guitarist could have kept those arpeggios going practically forever. They even got pretty dancey a lot of the time. The fourth song in was the only song to feature vocals, and it shifted the set to something more ethereal. By the closing song the guitarist had suddenly stolen the show, pulling something out of the Explosions in the Sky playbook with his wailing, delayed, distorted shredding. http://www.myspace.com/euphoriamyspace (White pattern was the closing song, and Come and Go gives an example of the formula I was talking about)