C.U.E., Kobe, 10/26/06

After Himeji, we had a day off and travelled to Kyoto to see some of the usual sites. This was Blake's first trip to Japan, so we thought some of the temples might be interesting. Touristy, yes, but worth checking out at least once. Somehow as we were walking around these lovely peaceful grounds, we (the three of us plus Shiflet) got into a friendly, but loud, "discussion" about Mike's insistence that there was an alternative version of the recent Poseidon movie remake. Not that an alternative version is that crazy of an idea but the fact it had Steve Guttenberg (yes, that one), Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell and one of the seemingly endless Baldwin's, raised our eyebrows. Plus somehow terrorists were involved with the ship capsizing. Mike had just seen it on Japanese TV, which perhaps explains something. Of course we had to confirm this at IMDB later that night and it very much does exist (and as one user put it, "it sucked balls."

Anyway, next stop for us was Kobe, another city Brian and I had performed in last year (Club Otoya). However this time was a different venue called C.U.E. It is a large 4 story building (called Caphouse), somewhat crumbling but still in decent shape that at one point belonged to the government, I think used for immigration. When they abandonded it, an arts foundation moved in and now provide artists space within its many rooms, C.U.E. being one of those.

Cue is run by Sunao Inami, a longstanding electronic musician from this area who happens to collect gear, and lots of it. In the back of this typically small space, there was synth after synth stacked on top of each other, next to, behind, occupying every corner of that part of the room. All seemingly unused. An analog junkie's wet dream.

We helped set up the front part of the room, getting some desks and table together and doing some general organization. It seemed like this space had gone unused for sometime but they did still have a working PA.

Sunao Inami was first and he had a host of gear setup on his table. Considering what he has to choose from (in terms of gear) I had no idea what he was going to be doing today. I didn’t pore over his table, so I can’t tell you what exactly he used. Certainly a fair amount of synth action along with other electronic gadget (wow, what a lame description, sorry). It was a well-paced, well-constructed set alternating heavier drones with some harsher tones and electronics. He also threw in some irregular programmed beats towards the end of the set that actually sat fairly well with everything else. It is performances like these that truly need to be heard to fully appreciate them. I could wax poetic about tones and drones but considering the variety of gear out there, not to mention how one uses their devices and how the sounds mix together, you can’t really do justice to things like timbre and texture. Much like I can describe a Mark Rothko painting to you, it will never have the same power as actually seeing it in fronf of you.

Next up was a solo act, Takahiro Sakatani. No one I was familiar with anyway. It took me a while to remember his name as I was writing this because overall his performance did little to distinguish him from the legions of laptoppers out there (including Brian and myself but we so clearly kick ass). It was a mix of mid to loud extended synth tones with some programmed beats coming in the middle of the set. It was fairly well constructed in that sense but otherwise an mediocre laptop set.

Kazuya Ishigami, who runs the Neus318 label, and Brian Labycz teamed up for this one and it sounded excellent. The two complemented each other well, often times setting up a call and response kind of scenario, inviting one to move on the other, or simply following the lead of the other person. Brian was also sampling Kazuya to some degree to introduce some more chaos. The sounds were largely digitial sounding, probably coming more from Kazuya and it often didn’t sit tightly with Brian's mix. But that's a relatively minor quibble. Sometimes that particular strategy was effective, introducing more jarring bits into the mix. Overall, excellent, exciting and dynamic.

Vertonen was up next, flashing his usual calling card of drones and harshness. He started out the set with a tease of quiet swells of noise, more single event interruptions rather than bursts of tones, some field records and other mysterious artifacts before settling in on the swirling collisions. Somewhere in the middle, as things we building up, he dropped what sounded like a punk loop in the middle of the sounds that stood out quite a bit and seemed to have little purpose other to demarcate that the second part of the set was coming. During that part he unleashed all of his pent-up frustation into a pretty good maelstrom of noise but at the cost of drowning everything else out (assuming there was a something else). Again, a good set.

To close the night, I performed solo, the only time on tour i so. It went better than I expected. Playing solo has its own challenges since youre working with/against yourself and no one else, so it can be easy to run out ideas with a partner spurring and catalyzing you one into something new. But, it was not too bad at all. I decided to concentrate on the much quieter end of things and there certainly lengthier periods of silence peppered thoughout the set, but also tempered by periods of great, rapid activity including some louder parts. My favorite moment was earlier on when i had a drone settling in, a mix of lower bass and a mid-highs and I slowly brought in some talk radio at a volume low enough for one to recognize that the human voice was present but not loud enough to really understand what was being said. I probably could have ended my set a little earlier but for the most part, it was solid. And a good opportunity to play within the quieter spectrum of things.