With the wife gone for another week, I was left with two options for Saturday night concert-going (staying home to wank off was NOT an option). For the last few weeks, I'd been thinking about hitting the
Hikashu concert at
BRIDGE, but over the last few days, mainly because of their
teaser on YouTube, I've been getting more and more curious about
Gangpol & Mit (see also
Gangpol und Mit), who were playing at
UrBANGUILD the same night.
My decision was made for me when my co-worker Andrew (who lives in Kyoto), said he might need a hand moving yesterday. Hikashu in Osaka was a no-go, so Gangpol & Mit it was to be. So after a little morning temple exploration in anticipation of my friends's visit in August, I scootered crosstown towards Higashioji Dori. Andrew lived in the Ebisu Gaijin House at the top of this wretched hill, so moving involved navigating a staircase that was probably constructed before World War II and backing up and down streets in a moving van that I'd had trouble squeezing through on my scooter. Luckily Andrew didn't have too much stuff to move, so it wasn't that big a deal. His new house looked like it might have been a restaurant at one time, very old school, with a unit bath that looked like it'd been borrowed from a trailer park, holes in the floorboards, gaijin-hating neighbors and TONS of personality. I pity the fool come next winter, but the location is fantastic, and if he can get that fish tank in the tatami floor running (no shit), I'll be looking forward to an interesting housewarming.
Anyway, after said box-shuffling, I headed for Kawaramachi, where I had to wait a solid 20 minutes in line just to park my SCOOTER (yes, that's Kyoto), before going to grab a bite to eat. I grabbed a beer and mediocre negiyaki down the street and then got in line. Amazingly, they opened on schedule.
The first thing I noticed after I got in was the unmistakable "technical cut" and moustache of
Kishino You-Ichi (see
岸野雄一). Kishino's an odd duck. Stylistically, you'd probably include him in the Shibuya-kei scene of the late 80's and early 90's, sort of a low-rent
Konishi Yasuharu, but his campy, more Francophile tendencies have always kept him out of the limelight (despite his involvement with several bands including his very decent
Space Ponch and production work for
Hi-Posi). Surprisingly, not only was he scheduled to perform (the last time I'd seen him a at
Aoi Heya had been a riot), but he had actually produced Gangpol & Mit's newest release,
Music Hall, Building Fall.
Anyway, the integration of music and visuals was the overall them of the show. Before Kishino and Gangpol, we had two openers. 永田一直＋相馬大 were up first. It was basically an audio-visual duet between ambient guitar and a laptop playing odd images in slow motion. Although, not a particularly striking performance, it was a pleasantly unsettling (if that's possible) space-out and was a good opener.
もぐらが一周するまで＋VJギンギラギン were up next, and they were much noisier and more interesting. The VJ had this AMAZING set-up, two DVD turntables (!) and a
KAOSS Pad Entrancer, with a live camera pointed at the pad. The other guy had an expensive looking sampler, a mini KAOSS Pad, pedals and other goodies. The DVDs VJギンギラギン was spinning were all homemade noise/video mash-ups, mostly samples of Chinese and Japanese tv shows from the 70's (very cool), and he would scratch, stutter and manipulate the images and noises to complement もぐらが一周するまで's beats and squeakings. Sometimes the visuals would switch to the VJ's hands over the KAOSS pad, and we could watch him creating the visual effects live as PART of the visual effects! Very breakcore at times, and the VJ was jumping up and down screaming at times, which seemed a bit disconcerting to some of more delicate Kyoto club-goers.
Finally, Kishino was up with his
ヒゲの未亡人 unit (see also
ヒゲの未亡人(岸野雄一＋ゲイリー芦屋)). Kishino came out in drag wearing a dress one would normally see at a funeral (black lace gloves and veil included). The audience was gobsmacked (remember, this is a tiny 50 year old Japanese guy with a Prince Valiant hairdo and a huge moustache). Except for a few cackling OLs, I don't think any of the young chiptune, breakcore and graphic design students in the audience were prepared for a Kishino lounge show, but that's what they got. A middle-aged woman played accompaniment to a chanson-esque backing track and a masterfully designed collage of 60's fashion clips from around the world. Kishino's timing was impeccable, a casual flourish of each hand sending sparkles on to the screen, synced perfectly to create the illusion of interaction. At one point, singing about how he'd end up marrying himself at this point (because no one else would touch him), he actually interacted with a tuxedoed version of himself on screen, coyly receiving a wedding ring and kiss from himself. Hee-larious. At the end of it all he had won the audience over, and he received more than just polite applause after his final number.
Gangpol & Mit were, well, just as you'd imagine from their YouTube videos. Great creative stuff, and bad-ass animation to keep this (mostly) laptop based performance from getting boring. The highpoint for me was their remix of the Alf theme song, which Gangpol described as "a famous European television program" (chuckle). After the concert, I talked with Mit a bit, and asked whether or not they'd considered uploading their stuff onto Last.FM. They said they already had an account, so I didn't push them to join my
LMD roster. I picked up a CD and a gorgeous picture disc LP (which I'll give a spin next time I have to DJ some vinyl).
After leaving, I popped into
ING to drop off this month's Japanzine. It was too crowded to enjoy myself there, so it was off to Rub a Dub for a Red Bull, and then to Rokudenashi for a tomato juice (yes I was bored stiff, but more importantly, I was trying to detox before my ride home). The very effeminate bartender remembered my name from last time (amazing!), they were playing good rock (strange for a jazz bar), and I got into a conversation about music with a young-looking guy on my right. After recommending some Virgin signing from the 70's that I should check out (Mike Oldfield's Fairlight, I think), I mentioned I liked
Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso UFO. He told me there was a tiny bar nearby run by one of
Kawabata Makoto's old bandmates, and, after I expressed interest, he took me there! The place was
Galaxie 500, and it WAS tiny, maybe 10 seats at a bar, if that. An older gaijin was there chatting up a cute J-MILF and
Mani Neumeier was on the stereo. The master (who's name has now unsurprisingly escaped me) was a soft-spoken, young-looking guy with a slight stutter; doing the math, though, he must have been in his mid-forties. The guy who took me was also (shock) 37! I'd thought he was a student for chrissakes; maybe his late-night job as a paper boy kept him young (yes, I'm serious, he was getting tanked up BEFORE work - not a bad lifestyle). Anyway, I was running out of steam, so I said my good-byes, and headed home, my Gangpol and Mit LP dangling precariously from my handlebars in an appropriated Family Mart bag.
Gangpol & Mit
Baroque Hoedown
