Flotsam, Jetsam, Mochi on a stick

I never intended this blog to document any major cultural observations or some of the more mundane aspects of the trip, like how much mochi we ate or what souvenirs we bought. But there are a few things I wanted to mention.

First, the three of us didn't kill each other after 10 days constantly together in relatively cramped quarters and Blake's one set of clothes for the whole trip (at least they were all black to hide the food drippings and track stains). I think the fact that we managed to reach a peak of retardation hitherto unknown to us helped, not to mention that most everyone had no idea what we were talking about (including us sometimes; just stringing together random profanity at the end of the night).

Second, my joke before I left was that I was really going for the food. Actually only a half joke since I could probably live out of the kombini's there and be happy and thats not saying anything about ramen noodles, taiken, squid jerky, anything pickled, green tea mochi, etc. Like last year, I'm gonna go through some withdrawal back home with our staples of cheeseburgers and fries.

Third, despite my bitching earlier, most everyone was very generous and accomodating. So to that, I'd like to pass along some love and thank you's to: Hiroyuki Ura and Mr & Mrs Ura, Mike Shiflet and Colleen Sharkey, Koutaro Fukui and Mrs Fukui, Bunsho Nishikawa, Shinjiro Yamaguchi, Tom Olive, Sunao Inami, Yosutoshi Yoshida, the guy who runs Ned's records, Gonzo Murakami, the Canolfan staff, Kazuya Ishigami, Tetsuya , everyone who came out to the shows (and bought the cd's!), and the rest of the venues. I'm probably forgetting people here; apologies in advance, you're thanked regardless.

A few other miscellany. I see knee-high boots w/heels and short skirts are still rather popular, which is good. However many of the ladies need some serious lessons in how to walk in high heels. If I only had video of some amazing knock-kneed, pigeon-toe'd walking we saw, you'd swear it was reverse rickets.

The weather was great, 2 days of rain early on, then low mid 70's with a lot of sun the rest of the way, a considerable bonus having to return to low 40's in Chicago.

Flights in and out were actually decent. No major harassments and on my way out of Narita, it took about 30(!) minutes from stepping foot in the airport until I got to the gate.

Oh yes, I finally found my fucking pro yakyu baseball caps, which only took a second trip to find. Last year I was fortunate to stumble on to a Hanshin Tigers store and find a ballcap there but amazingly, esp. right after the playoffs, I couldn't find any others anywhere else. Oh, plenty of Yankees, Dodgers and Mariners gear as if I can't buy enough of that shit back home, but not to be able to find a Chunichi hat in Nagoya? Anyway, we made it to Tokyo Dome one evening and I finally found my little mecca of baseball junk so I bought myself a Seibu Lions and Yakult Swallows hats. Naturally, I lot of the Japanese guys I talked with were not only surprised that I knew the teams, but why I knew as much as I did about Japanese pro ball? Hey, why do you know so much English? That and I'm a baseball otaku as well I guess.

Finally, since we managed to record some of the shows onto DAT tape (when it didnt crap out on us), check the individual entries for links to mp3s. In true LSD fashion, the 2 best shows didn't record due to DAT malfunctioning so they'll just have to live on in our (rapidly deteriorating) memories.

Maruike House, Tokyo, 10/28/06

This was the final day of shows for us. Actually I was leaving earlier than the boys; they were flying out on Sunday from Tokyo and I was flying out today. We traveled from Osaka (spending the night in Bunsho's tiny apartment) to Tokyo by Shinkansen and got there in just less than 3 hours. Travelling on those trains is great. It's fairly roomy, travel is amazingly quick (you don't realize just how fast until you see one when you're a bystander on the road it's passing - blink and you miss it). Plus smoking cars! Thanks Blake and Brian for letting me give some of the extra cancer you'd been missing in the states. Incidentally, a few days prior, as we made plans to travel to Kyoto for a day, some man jumped in front of a Shinkansen in a rather successful suicide attempt and the train was "badly damaged." Kind of like a little bird hitting a 747? Bad news, but no one hurt on the train itself.

Once we rolled into Tokyo Station, I pretty much had to haul ass to the special express Narita train. So we said our goodbyes, cried, hugged and promised to write as soon as we got home. I think I managed to make the train with about 2 minutes to spare, very typical for me. Otherwise I'd be waiting at least another 30 minutes. The ride itself was an hour during which I had the pleasure of meeting a gentleman (named Jeff? sorry) wearing a Death In June t-shirt with tattoos decorating both arm, up and down. I guess he had dj'd quite a bit in his younger days (in San Fran) and would still occasionally roll out. He told me he had a a punk band, "tongue-in-cheek, very tongue-in-cheek," called Dead Vampires. Great name. Oh yeah, now he is a full time horticulturist...

Long boring story short, got to the airport with plenty of time and amazingly (from the time of stepping foot in Narita) i was at the gate in 30 minutes. Even had time to unload some yen at the duty-free's. $20 for 2 cartons of Marlboro's? Cancer, baby, cancer.

Ok: here's the much more interesting part of the story. This one is a gues entry from Blake since he was actually there and performing:

The final show was at Maruike House, and it was unequivocally the
smallest venue we played on the tour. It was in a joint art/apartment
complex—artists studios on the first floor and apartments on the
second.

The space was a room at the end of the hall that was approximately 8
feet wide by 12 feet long with perhaps a 7 foot roof. “What are we
getting into?” crossed both my and Brian’s mind.

After a short set-up period (the table we used cut the audience space
by about a third) we wandered around the neighborhood, venturing to the
always-present Lawsons convenience store for pre-show snacks and trying to guess what sort of turnout this night would yield.

At around 7:30 things started rolling, and to our pleasant surprise the
room was packed—one might say an easy task given the size, but with 12
to 14 audience members crammed into what had been reduced to an 8 x 6
foot space, well, it gave new meaning to the phrase “an intimate night
with…”

Yosuke Yamagishi opened the night, delivering a subtle array of icy
tones and washes decorated with some clicky-scratchy glitch material
(but never really bordering on the rhythmic). An overall solid
performance, but it went on a little too long for my taste. Brian
played next, opening with some crackled sputter and crinkling balanced
out by short bursts of distorted choke (similar to some of the elements
he had been using previously during the tour). He also brought in a few
longer drones to augment his stable of audio. At one point he had an
ending which I thought he should have taken (he mentioned in hindsight
that he was uncertain of how to work the transition), but instead
switched back to more of the scrabbled field recordings that he’d
opened with. I think he recovered, though, with some field recordings
of waves on a beach and high tones augmented by acoustic bell chimes
which worked out rather nicely.

I started my set with a bass drone that, for perhaps the first time of
the tour, I really felt warbled and shifted from channel to channel in
a successful way and created a pretty decent spatial weirdness off and
on. I then brought in some higher tone gristly hiss that eventually
drowned out the more soothing bass drones and let that boil for a few
minutes before delivering a burbling belch of processed
contact-mics-in-the-mouth stew to bring the night to a close (the last
bit seemed to resonate with folks the most).

One of the highlights for me was that Kotomi, who runs the distribution
channel Molehill, came up for the show, which was easily a 2 hour train
ride for her. It was great to put the face to the name after working
with her for the past several years. After the show, a handful (nine)
of us went out to dinner at a delicious restaurant (which made this
show a great note to end this tour on).

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.

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.

Ease, Himeji, 10/24/06

This promised to be an interesting night (but aren't they all). We rolled into Himeji late afternoon and Mike Shiflet picked us up and drove us out to venue called Ease. Mike was performing that night along with the guitarist from LSD-March, a pretty good Japanese psych band if you're not familiar with them. Blake as usual was going at it solo and Brian and I were doing our typical LSD thing (although we were billed just with our real names, to avoid confusion for the, ahem, many, many people who might think we were LSD-March, or something).

Shiflet and Michishita Shinsuke were an intriguing combination. Apparently it was originally supposed to be a trio with a saxophone player but he just didn't show up so Mike and Shinsuke went at it. It was definitely heavier on the guitar end of things, especially as it built to the peak during the middle of the performance, when Shinsuke pretty much took over and just laid into the guitar, a la LSD-March’s heavier moments. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, it was pretty heavy, intense, with some searing, reverbed, delayed chords and feedback shooting into the stratosphere. But at this point Mike was mostly a non-factor, his contribution (through the venue's tiny PA, a set of Bose speakers) being drowned out by Michishita Shinsuke's amp. However, when there space for Mike to breathe, some interesting things were going on, mostly in the background. Gurgles, sizzles, frosty blasts of sines, clipped sounds that provided an interesting contrast to Michishita Shinsuke’s more subtle playing when he was just exploring some delicate strumming or slightly more extended techniques. Mostly though, it was a constant stream of sound that could have been pared back a bit (and I don’t think the PA could have taken Mike's punishment if he really wanted to run it red). He suspected having the third person there as planned would have altered things for the better in terns of communication; it often felt, especially during that ecstatic middle peak, Shinsuke was on his own plane.

Blake was next. The soothing drones were left in Nagoya and he started with some dirtier field recordings and assorted fractured electronic sounds before shifting into some of his more usual territory of progressively louder and more sustained tones with a complex interchange of frequencies, durations and textures going on. It reminded me of large, slowly moving tectonic plates shifting against each other in unknowable patterns, the mammoth, inevitability of it. Due to space limitations, he never approached the loudness we've accustomed him to unleash, but that was not a bad thing. Much like the Canolfan show, it was restrained in the right places, keeping a level of menace tethered up, just one not knowing if and when that tether would break.

LSD finished the evening. Usual set up but the results were somewhat disappointing. I can at least speak from my end and say a few the methods I chose to employ and how to intervene fell flat. Some things that went on for too long, or other elements cutting though the mix too sharply, short of dangling out there, seemingly out of place amongst the rest of the surroundings. I think most of all I realized that I need a lot of work to do to expand my palette, or rather how I would expand the palette. I have quite a variety of source material that I employ during shows but I can run through a fair amount of material rather quick. The question becomes how to transform the regular, mundane, regular sources into something entirely different (what I might say could be viewed as extended technique on the laptop). I did head in that direction a bit for this tour, including a using Nord Micro strictly as an audio-in fx unit. Unfortunately I did not have enough time before we left to construct something I really liked, so the patch I used was somewhat lacking I thought. The Nord is flexible enough to be a rather sophisticated filter bank, an distortion unit and more and it is certainly controllable thru MIDI. So I decided to build my own controller box to help control MIDI parameters on the fly (though I'm gonna have to do some serious diving in MAX/MSP) to make that happen, but that’s a story for another time.

So in short, I was starting to feel I was working with a bit of limited range, which became more apparent with a partner to perform with. Once I get back home, its back to the drawing board.

Anyway, the venue owners were super nice, and the place was exceedingly small (probably smallest of all the we played) but a few people came out to check things out. Afterwards Mike drove us to his place in Ichinomiya, a hour outside of Himeji).

Canolfan, Nagoya, 10/23/06

Damn what a hangover. We had to get up at 8am to start our travels to Nagoya (from Tokyo) as well as activating our rail passes (which last year I lost 3 hrs after arriving in Tokyo, dumbass that I am). Once we got on the Shinkansen (bullet train), with a bento box, Pocari Sweat and some coffee, I was feeling a bit better.

Tonight's show was at Canolfan, a long running well established venue. Brian had some experiences there when he lived in Japan some years ago and it has continued to host a variety of music through out the years. Needless to say, the place was small with a suitably small PA. It was good to see familiar faces from last year, in particular our good friend Koutaro Fukui who we met in Chicago a while ago. He had lived and worked there for about 7 years before returning home to Nagoya to work at M-Audio 2 years ago.

This evening consisted of Brian and I again, Blake solo, as well as Koutaro's group, Poca and Gonzo and Yoshiyuki Hirao. Hirao-san, the organizer of the event, showed up about 30 minutes before the start of the performances interestingly enough (and we had some doubts whether he was coming at all). He was first to perform and his set consisted mostly of radios and a few small electronic devices. Despite the limited palette, I found it to be a rather interesting set, much in the vein of what has been dubbed "onkyo." Mostly minimal, using sustained static, white noise and crackles from the radio, supplemented with sharper crackles and sizzles, including several jolting electronic stabs that stirred people from their torpor. I could have done without the constant backdrop of white noise from the radio.

Next up came Gonzo Murakami and Poca (whose real name I still don't know). Gonzo we met last year in Nagoya and certainly one of the more interesting people I've run across. He has a hippy/crusty vibe to him, along with a love of chemicals and music. His oeuvre consists of toys and little electronic gadgets he amplifies with a microphone. I actually first saw him in Chicago with several other Japanese performers and liked it quite a bit. Consequently, last year when I met him in person and saw him perform, it was once again interesting. On first blush, at least when one meets him, I don't think one would expect this kind of music from him. It is delicate and he has a good ear for improvisation, construction and the sounds themselves. This evening he performed with his frequent collaborator, Poca who was largely using feedback processed through some electronics, pedals, etc. They put together an interesting performance with a good sense of dynamics, with Gonzo animatedly manipulating his toys, winding things up and letting them go, some subtle percussion like effects in there as well, and Poca complementing him with more drawn out tonal/feedback and looped sounds that were occasionally rhythmic. Gonzo had quite an interesting "device" (if you met him, you'd understand why it made perfect sense), which was simply a cardboard box with a mounted exposed tape player, radio and some exposed electronics (contacts?) that he used as his main instrument. A fine performance.

Third on the evening was the Koutaro Fukui Group, led by Koutaro on guitar, along with a second guitarist and bass player. This was different than what I expected (actually, I didn't know quite what to expect). That is, it veered away from the abstraction and noise we were hearing this week. They performed three pieces, using some sort of structure they improvised in a bit. There was a strong amount of melodic content and rhythm but not to the point of rigidity and outright songs. Talking with Koutaro later, he told me that he was concentrating on somewhat more "traditional" music and had not been working much on abstract material. So this performance was not entirely surprising.

Blake followed with a somewhat delicate (for him, anyway) set of shifting drones slowing moving against each other, flowing well but never shifting abruptly. It certainly was more of a straight drone set which was quite lovely. It had a very meditative feel to it and sitting on the couch listening to it, I lost track of time very quickly, engrossed in the waves.

Finally, Brian and I closed the evening. Since we had not seen Koutaro since last year, we invited him to sit in with us (on guitar) as a trio. It turned out to be a rather fortuitous pairing. It may have been my favorite set of the tour as the three of us found some excellent ground to work in. Koutaro's interventions ranged from sharper single notes to sustained tones along with the occasional plucks and scrapes. Brian and I contributed our usual combination of electroacoustic manipulation, sustained tones and field recordings. It turned out to be a rather dynamic palette.

And lo and behold, we got paid. Oh yeah, here's Gonzo's setup along with his instrument of choice, the cardboard box:

Loop-Line, Tokyo, 10/22/06

Our second show seemed more promising as Brian and I performed at Loop-Line last year to a fairly full house (relative mind you, as I've mentioned most of the venues are tiny; last year somehow close to 50 people managed to cram themselves in) and we were hoping for another solid turnout.

That was mostly the case. Not quite a many attendees as 2005, but a respectable number (30 or so). Another factor that may have contributed was the variety of performers tonight: Fourcolor (one part of Minamo) who has releases on 12k, HUVA (Hiroyuki Ura and Shinjiro Yamaguchi), LSD (that’s us) and Vertonen (Blake).

The show started at 7pm with HUVA performing first. They had a solid set that tended towards the minimal with some thoughtful explorations of delicate tones, field recordings and unidentified cracklings and scrapings. It's hard to tell with these boys just how much of this is actually "improvised" in that the music is not gestural in nature. It's built around tones, loops and recordings so it's more of a question of triggering particular sounds rather than launching things into the ether much like one would do with an instrument. At least that is the aesthetic that Brian and I pursue. Obviously we use laptops and electronics (along with the odd object or two) but our methodology is to employ them more like traditional instruments in that we are interested in gestural expression. That is, if one uses a guitar and plucks a string, you hear a note as opposed to pressing play/triggering a sample that launches a rigid, "pre-determined" loop. It starts, it ends. One can certainly achieve some complex sequences and progressions that way but ultimately one is just presenting a collection of sounds.

I'm not saying that our particular methodology is better or superior than someone performing from a loop based perspective. Rather it is more conducive to my interpretation of what improvisation should be. Reacting to your partner(s) in an intelligent way, being flexible to adapt to a variety situations and, as Derek Bailey suggested, avoiding idioms. I don't particularly need to have thousands of sounds in my arsenal. In fact, limitations can be a relatively good to stay focused and play within one's means. Just as a guitarist will have a finite number of sounds (even with extended technique, a guitar is still a guitar), I have a particular "library" of sounds that I use regularly. It is simple augmented by some processes (analog and digital) that I can use to transform more "mundane" sounds into something wholly different.

Armchair philosophy aside, Fourcolor was up next. Normally this is just one individual but today he had a partner doing visuals along side. I didn't get a chance to really talk to them about how exactly they interacted together. The gentleman doing the visuals was using software he wrote/built himself, with the visual elements being heavily and rigidly geometric in nature (squares and spheres of varying sizes). These shapes would move about on the screen (the laptop was fed into a projector with the images being show on the back wall, behind the performers.

I was a little surprised by Fourcolor's set, not that he had a visual artist with him, but that his music was different than what I expected from him tonight, having heard all of his records (including the very recent 12k release). Fourcolor is one of the members of Minamo, a Japanese electroacoustic group that I like a lot. However, I was disappointed with Fourcolor's latest on 12k, a collection of pretty melodic tones, drones and the usual of rhythmic clicks and pops.

Blake was third and he began with some field recordings made earlier that morning before we left Hiroyuki's house. The bedroom we slept in faced the river and there was a small park next to it, not far from the house. Late morning we began hearing a progressively louder cacophony of cats (we saw them the day before, a large group of strays that were there frequently). Blake used his voice recorded to capture this nice little symphony of howls, screeches and other unnamable noise they were making. The cats recordings gave way to some heavier drones before another recording of felines was brought in. This one in particular was of his cat and was really well recorded, which was problematic in that it stood out very sharply from the rest of the mix and was instantly identifiable as a cat, cutting through the grittier portion of the sounds. After that however, he returned to the more menacing collection of tones, buzzes, grindings and metal jabberings he has been doing so well. This particular set had less of an assaultive edge to it, as we weren't performing with the out and out harsh noise musicians. The set progressed nicely, ending with a heavily pitched down vocal/melodic sample of Audrey Hepburn (not that one could tell who it was without being told). It worked nicely in this context as the tones were fading into the air, adding a very melancholy feel to the last portion of his set. It reminded of a lot of the ending of 2001, when Bowman is dismantling HAL9000 by taking him apart and he starts singing "Daisy Bell," which becomes progressively slower, more pitched down until it stops altogether.

Once again, LSD was last. We decided to incorporate a mic into the affair, as Brian had some small acoustic objects with him (bells and other trinkets). I started the set with some squid jerky I had bought the previous night, crinkling the plastic bag then shoveling the jerky in my mouth and chewing, crunching away right into the mic. And man did that jerky stink; I felt a little sorry for the people sitting in the first row as I think the pungency wafted out rather quickly. As I was eating, we both started bringing in quieter sounds to complement the plastic crackle. This set was more like our usual performances, tending toward the quieter and sparser with the rare burst of louder, sharper sounds. I also briefly incorporated some radio (mostly static) as well as trading some tones, low bass throbs and oscillations. I also used a few static loops, one of which was a piano loop we had recorded last year that sat nicely in the mix. The set probably went on a bit too long, as I sensed at one point Brian was ready to stop and what was likely a "natural" ending point but I pressed on for a bit more. But that was me being a little selfish; I think I was rather engrossed in the sounds and was enjoying the proceedings little much to stop just yet. Overall however, it was a fairly solid performance.

Loop-line, like many of these small venues, served alcohol, so by the end of the night there, Blake and I had 5 shots of vodka each between us (Wilkinson’s? could have been worse I guess), not to mention my 2 tall boys of Kirin prior to the performance. Perhaps you see where this is headed. I ended up having 3 Moscow Mules at izagaya after the show so by the end of the night I was rather hammered and passed out about 2 minutes after getting back to Hiro's house. Fortunately, we got a ride from one of his friends as by the time we left Loop-Line it was already raining hard and after izagaya, it was utterly pissing. I still got rather soaked.

And once again, no money. I'll spend less time bitching about it (the space is apparently fairly expensive to rent) but it seems like overall this year, things have been a little more slapdash in terms of promotion and overall "professionalism." Maybe courtesy is a better word? If one is taking on the responsibility of putting together an event and having out of towners play, it would seem that some sort of compensation would be in order. Certainly that's how I have approached this when I have the opportunity to put together events for people in Chicago. I may not have much money to offer but if I have to pay people out of my own pocket so be it. This is not the kind of music or "scene" where people make money hand over fist, perhaps with some notable exceptions, and supporting each other in whatever little way always helps. So picking up flyers (nice ones at that) 2 days before the show is probably not the most helpful of tactics. Like the previous night, things ended with a rather disappointing izakaya (listen to me, I'm a fucking Japanese food connoisseur all of a sudden).

Cafe Flying Teapot, Tokyo, 10/21/06

Well, it only took me 2 months to update this thing, but here we are in Japan. We flew in on the 19th and had a free day on the 20th in Tokyo so of course we ran around (this is Blake's first visit to Japan), hit some stores, ate, etc. My main goal was to get back to PSF/Modern Music and spend even more money and I easily accomplished this meager goal. And I did pick up some good records. Shopping aside, on to the first performance:

Like most places that I've seen, Tea Pot was a master bedroom sized venue doubling as a coffeehouse and performance space. Interestingly, it had no PA so one was procured for us. The place itself had a quaint charm to it, the typical long bar counter, various teapots, cups and coffee paraphernalia behind the counter. But much of the place was rather empty; not much on the walls or even on the shelves. One corner had piles and piles of manga, assorted books and magazines along with a PC.

The PA was waiting for us so we crammed into a corner on several tables and dumped our mess of cables and electronics there. We had the bulk of the gear as the rest of the gentlemen performing that night had rather stripped down kits that only required a chair or a small table.

If any of you don't know, Japanese sound checks usually happen early to mid-afternoon. We arrived about 15:30 and set up right away. The actual performances were not starting until 19:30. We had a chance to walk around this part of town, get some yakitori and watched a few innings of the Japan series (eventually won by the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters) in front of an electronics store until the proprietor came out and silently glared at us from behind.

People started trickling in around 19:30 and by the end I'd estimate there were about 20 paying customers. Given the nature of the music, the size of the venue, the vast expanse of Tokyo and what we're used to overall as far as audience, this was pretty good.

First up was Tetsuya Miyazaki. He had a guitar using MIDI as a bridge into his PC. He started with short blasts of icy noise that progressively grew longer until shards of glass were flying into my bleeding ears. This was rather similar to what I saw from Tetsuya last year, fractured, distorted notes tending toward the higher end of the register. His set was about 10 minutes long and seemed to end abruptly. We speculated that something on his PC crashed, putting an end to his performance.

Following Tetsuya were the noise veterans Government Alpha (Yosutoshi Yoshida) and Kazumoto Endo. They had rather stripped down kits, both using Kaos pads, with Yoshida using some sort of mic-type device to generate noise and Endo using a megaphone, with a mic'ed amplifier for feedback. Inexplicably, there were two "dancers" performing with them. Now, I'm not that smart a guy to pretend to understand dance, so I'll leave that to someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about. For me, it did nothing except provide a few moments of amusement.

Yoshida was terrific, sending scalding feedback and heavily processed vocals bouncing off Endo's feedback. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed with Endo, having seen him perform before. The feedback/megaphone combination seemed a bit lazy and was rather monochromatic and unspectacular. Fortunately with Yoshida there, the combination proved effective, much like the new "Blast Furnace" cd Yoshida gave me. They went on for about 15 minutes or so before calling it quits.

Up third was Tadashi Usami. I wracked my brain trying to remember where I knew that name from, but when he arrived there I realized it was someone we had performed with last year in Tokyo. As much as I hate this term, his set is what I would call "electronica." It started with a very clipped sine acting as a rhythmic underpinning to some tones and sizzling but quiet electronic gurglings, before giving way to an almost marimba sounding set of chimes, finally segueing into chest thumping programmed beats. Not my cup of tea necessarily. One of those cases where I really like the guy but not his aesthetic choices. He studied at Mills and speaks English really well so it was good to talk to him and have a reasonably sophisticated conversation.

We were up next (LSD: Brian and I). Someone had suggested we play for about 30 minutes since everyone's set up to now was so damn short (no more than 15 minutes). Nothing unusual for us as that is a typical set for us. Given the people we were playing with, we decided to use some heavier bursts of noise but not in a sustained manner, much more chopped up, dropped out, etc.

We started with a quiet passage of some crackles and scrapings before sputtering in with some heavy, loud distorted sounds. Much of the performance vacillated between loud and quiet, using tonal methods as well as gestural interventions and more discernible sounds. Brian and I use acoustically/environmentally sourced sounds for much of our material, distorted or not to make for an interesting combination of texture and dynamics.

It worked some of the time this particular instance. Some of the changes in dynamics were too heavy handed for our liking and I would have preferred longer passages of quiet and restrained gestures. What I learned later was Brian's controller crapped out several minutes into the set so he was grappling with a partially non-functioning kit (and an admirable job doing that) that limited his range somewhat. My own complaint was the three pedals I had in my set up were really noisy and responsible for some of the "heavy handedness" that we disliked. I may have to strip it down to one pedal to cut down on the noise it produces (especially one of the "boutique" pedals I have and see if that helps). But I don't think we're going to be pushing the blistering noise much the whole tour since we tend more toward quieter, gestural sounds rather than blasts of noise. Overall, not a bad set, a pretty good warm up for the rest of the tour. And Yoshida paid us a nice compliment, saying that he thought our sounds were "intelligent."

Finally our co-conspirator Blake Edwards aka Vertonen, was up, last one on the bill. It was one of the better sets I've heard Blake do recently, a solid progression of tones, drones, and buzzes. What I liked about this set in particular was the incorporation of more textural sounds, rather than just solely tones and the variety of dynamics. Things progressed nicely until reaching a blistering peak of noise towards the end before closing with some menacing but soothing bells. The only complaint from me was his use of a looped vocal sample in the middle of the set that seemed to almost separate the performance into 2 pieces. I think if the sample was buried under the noise somewhere it would have been much more interesting, but the fact that it stood out so starkly, was so obviously looped and had a faux-menacing vibe about kind of killed that particular part of the set. But that was a minor hiccup in an overall strong performance.

And that was that. The whole show progressed in a very businesslike fashion, no introductions, 3 minutes between each performance, and fairly quick dispersal after everything was done.

I do have to say we were disappointed (and not a little pissed about not being paid anything) for the night. With about 20 paying customers at 1500 yen a head (as well as learning that the house only charged 3000 yen for the setup), I found it difficult to believe that "they made no money." One of the Japanese boys was in charge of the door and he was the one breaking the news to us. I'm not gonna be more of a bitch and start naming names, but you know who you are. It was fucking lame, followed by an equally disappointing izakaya afterwards at which we only had about 30 minutes to inhale our food (in addition to me pounding 3 Kirin drafts) because the same dick I was bitching about took an hour after the show to get his shit together and leave the space.

Despite the somewhat sour note the evening ended on, we had a pretty good time and I'm looking forward to the next evening's show at Loop-Line.

What the?!

This blog is a documentation of 3 guys from Chicago touring in Japan for 10 days. Blake Edwards, Brian Labycz and Vadim Sprikut (the "author" here) are the gaijin in question. Blake frequently records and performs as Vertonen and runs the C.I.P. label. Brian is an electronic improviser, also trained on koto. He currently co-curates the Myopic Bookstore Improvised Music Series. Vadim is also an electronic improviser and runs the Oblast label and curates the AC improvised music series.
I'll be documenting a little bit before we actually leave, as we continue to confirm the details, but the majority will be about our time in Japan. Truthfully, I don't think there will be too much content as this will be mostly a working trip. We're there for 10 days and aside from flying in and out, we may only have 2 off days there.

Brian and I (we perform together as LSD) traveled to Japan last November for 2 weeks to sight-see and play 4 shows. Brian lived in Japan for 3 years in the late 90's and is still fluent in Japanese. I had never been to Japan, but was always interested in the country, people and of course the music. Brian had not been back since he left so this was a great opportunity to visit for a variety of reasons. This earlier trip was the genesis for our upcoming visit. We now had contacts and some experience under our belt to make this worthwhile.

(Edit: Ok, I cheated. I didn't have the time nor net access to post this regularly from Japan. I did keep entries as we were travelling, so this is more of recap of what happened than anything.)