Bridge, Osaka, 10/27/06

Bridge: finally, a sizeable venue with a serious fucking PA. So much so, that Blake needed to have his picture taken in front of some of the speakers. Now that’s Rock. In the morning, it took about 30 minutes and several people helping us before we could get into the damn place to drop our gear off. Finally, we got the elevator to work, and we were greeted by a bushy haired individual that was hanging out there. It turned out to be Bunsho Nishikawa, which we found out after we came back in the afternoon. I had expected Bunsho to be in the U.S. supporting some sort of dance/performance thing but apparently that had been cancelled and he remained at home. Bunsho ended up sort of dj’ing before the performances started.

The three of us walked around for a bit, especially since Brian and I didn’t get to do much of anything in Osaka last year other than sleep. Last night, we ended up going from Kobe to the hotel we were at last year, Hotel Chuo, a businessman hotel. Essentially, its one small room, with a bed, TV and little table. This year, they added cable internet access to all the rooms, so that was cool. Unfortunately that only brought some bad news for me as I found out a close friend had been brutally murdered at her home in Chicago. It certainly cast a darker pall on the rest of my time here but I tried to at least temporarily put that insanity aside until I returned home. So we ended up in the electronics district of course and I bought a bunch of knobs, pots, buttons and a metal box to eventually build my own controller. Brian and I also bought some random J-Pop singles; at a 100 yen a hit, we couldn’t resist.

After a lunch of ramen noodles (I don’t think I could ever get tired of ramen style dishes in Japan since we’re not talking about Maruchan dried noodles with the packets of MSG) we went back for sound check. As I said, the place was big. Huge, as matter of fact, especially by the standards we had experienced so far. The PA was equally as impressive. I think this really galvanized to try and kick some ass tonight since we could get as loud as we wanted to and perhaps kick in some of the lower register frequencies lost on some of the tinier PA’s.

Tonight’s lineup was decided partially at the very end of soundchecks: Mike Shiflet solo, Tim Olive and Futoshi Moriyama our friends from Nagoya Gonzo Murakami and Koutaro Fukui, Blake and LSD.

Shiflet put in a great set. I had not seen him much when he was in the States, so I don’t know how “representative” this was for him in terms of performances. Whatever, I liked it a lot. A pretty solid mix of tonal, textural, silence and an absolutely scalding blast of high end noise towards the end that left my ears pissing blood.

Tim and Moriyama followed. I was familiar with Tim’s work a little, mostly through his duo with Bunsho Nishikawa, now called Supernatural Hot Rug and Not Used. The 2 cd’s they have released felt not unlike our (Brian and I) own aesthetic, largely emphasizing events, gestures with less sustained bursts of tonal activity. Though he was performing with a musician unknown to me, they managed to keep a similar style. Tim was using a tabletop guitar augmented with objects acoustic and electronic and Moriyama was using some analog equipment fairly effectively, producing a decent battery of complementary sounds. It tended toward the more percussive end of things, albeit with quite a bit of variety in tone and timbre. Overall, it was a good pairing.

Next up were the Nagoya boys and they kept the night rolling along with another winner. Gonzo had his setup from the previous show, though he seemed inclined towards harsher sounds this time around and Koutaro proved an effective foil on guitar, replacing Poca (usually accompanying Gonzo on feedback). There were many large swells, oceans of drones and organ like tones. They produces a more continuous stream of sound than I thought they would but transitioned well from part to part. Gonzo injected his usual subtle textures and rhythms with various toys and gadgets.

Blake followed with a crushing set. It was similar to his regular performances of harsh electronics, brittle tones and colliding sputterings except on a much louder scale. And in his case, that only helped. A little suffocating, a little enveloping and heavy.

Brian and I closed out the night. We started with an abrupt blast of noise that quickly faded out to a really heavy bass tone, accompanied by some other sustained electronic sounds. Soon, the battery of textures, isolated events and call/response tactics surfaced as we traded blows. We still had our noisy sputters but also tried to include rather quiet and sometimes altogether silent parts, which I think sounded more dramatic when compared to the potential the PA gave us in terms of sheer volume. We never hit a period when it was simply sustained, harsh noise, but there were a few abrasive parts. I think we ran out of gas just a bit at the end as we wound down with a dronier section but its always difficult to get a good read on where the “right” place is to step. And as had happened to us a number of times when we have a good performance, we don't record it (DAT malfunction this time).

Afterwards we crammed into a small bar/izakaya across the street for some beer, tako balls and tofu. Bunsho was putting us up at his place (unsurprisingly small like the previous venues) and we managed to squeeze in on some futons. We were heading out to Tokyo early next morning on the Shinkansen (about a 3 hour ride), as Brian and Blake had one more show and I was flying home in the afternoon.