micropop for a noisy world

Tokyo 1969 by Toshi Ichiyanagi

2010-02-26T19:54:00.000-08:00

Hats off to Yoko Ono who was absolutely stunning at the Oakland Fox Theater earlier this week, performing with Deerhoof, Cornelius, along with other special guests (Pikachu of Afrirampo, who, IMO is cooler than Satomi of dh, and Harper Simon - aka son of Paul Simon, and a guy named Jarod who "plays 1800 instruments" according to Sean Lennon).

Not to be gossipy or anything, but equally as mind-bending is an electronic music piece by her ex-husband (no, not John, the other one--Toshi).

Tokyo 1969 is an amazing piece that captures the energy and neurosis of that year, using field recordings, voices from radio, enka, and wailing rock guitar. Post-Cage, pre-Otomo, it's somewhere between Charles Ives (with a tape recorder), Jimi Hendrix and Taj Mahal Travellers. No wonder the coolest woman in 1969 was married to him. Hear a sample of it here. At 15:30 minutes and 30 seconds long, it's pretty long for an electroacoustic piece, but hardly boring. According to the liner notes in the album, Oto no Hajime wo motomete 4 Shigeru Sato Work, the piece uses chance operations inspired by John Cage (who was briefly Ichiyanagi's teacher in nyc). These operations are used in two basic ways: 1) by manipulating and connecting the machines in the NHK radio electronic music studio in random ways. 2) Asking students to manipulate these arbitrarily connected machines in any way they wish. But without sound. Huh? Not quite sure what that means. In any case, the piece is quite awe-inspiring. Far preceding the onkyo movement, Ichiyanagi conceived his work as a piece of kankyo ongaku, which translates to "environmental music." Importantly, the chance operations, though inspired by Cage take it the concept to the next level. What I mean by that is that the operation that Cage dreamed up seems to have finally caught up with the appropriate medium. The raw material of Tokyo 1969 ask to be treated in terms of chance operations - what's the use of trying to order found sounds in some logical way? To serve its function as "environmental music" chance operations provided the piece with the perfect method to achieve its purpose.

And a small bonus for all you Virilio fans, there's this video of Shinjuku since 1969... in 10 seconds. Speed or intensity?

Records of Last Week: Lady Sovereign and Filastine

2009-03-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

Lady Sovereign – "Jigsaw" [Midget]

Hilarious electro "midget" rap album by a *just slightly* grown up Lady Sov. Plenty of catchy tunes and fuzzy bass on tracks like “I got you dancing” and the Britpop-ish "Student Union". "Food Fight" serves up some Kool Keith/MF Doom -caliber foodie sleaze (kinda yucky but funny). Hear Sov sing on “Jigsaw." She's now on her own label after leaving Jay-Z's Def Jam. Skeptics may say that she's taken on an MIA sound. It's true, maybe, but Lady SOV still raps like no other little person's business, and I'm pretty into it.

Micropop Rating: ***1/2 (out of 5 *s)

Filastine “Dirty Bomb” [Soot/Post World Industries]

Percussionist/producer/mixologist Grey Filastine (Barcelona) loves to sample. Not afraid to experiment, Filistine juxtaposes bits of Bollywood, dubstep, hip hop, Middle Eastern electronica, Balkan Brass, flamenco guitar, old radio broadcasts and more to make a mean polyrhythmic universe. Tracks like “Marxa” and “Bitrate Sneers” call for insurrection from the dancehall. Filastine is politcal, but he doesn't preach to you, and he uses musical appropriation to bring listeners and dancers together like a good commrade.

Micropop Rating: *** (out of 5*s)

Plørk, Slörk, and Ikea

2009-01-19T22:33:00.000-08:00

The quietly active Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) invades the West Coast! What we didn't hear about the not-so-remarkable Macworld this year was that the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) made its public debut. Using salad bowls from ikea (oh wait, this reminds me of a Michael Zbyszynski of Berkeley's CNMAT mentioned in the nytimes in 2007) they crafted ambisonic-ish speakers. SLork made it onto the apple website, even though Brad Stone didn't feel like mentioning them on his Macworld live blog for the nytimes.

Director/composer Ge Wong has some good and innovative ideas about using the body of the laptop like an instrument (ex. using the trackpad to "bow", tilting the computer to trigger acoustic reactions)... But the whole experience kind of leaves me hanging. What's up with this bizarre (academic) phenomenon? The new "orchestra" revived through Macbooks? Interactivity and democracy through really expensive computers? Are BLOrk (Berkeley Laptop Orchestra) and MiLOrk (MIT Laptop Orchestra) next?

Computers can make music. So what? Sonically and musically, frankly, it's not that exciting. The ensemble employs sounds that were cool in the 60s and 70s sci-fi movies that used tape instead of Max MSP, but wtf, still the same sounds? It's 2009, come on. In fact, Ge Wong himself announces that SLOrk in many ways is a traditional ensemble. Personally, I would find it more interesting if these institutionally cemented laptop orchestras could finally move beyond the "traditional" (in the sense of 19th-century notions of public high culture--the zenith of the large orchestra), and come up with new sounds to fit current uses and meanings of technology and ideas about the public.

Above: Stanford composers disguised as Apple store "Geniuses"? There's a reason apple loves them.

Watch a video of SLOrk in action here!

Rabbit Deer?

2008-12-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

To make up for my not so micro absence (or not), micropop will post a found image off the interweb for you. It's called "large rabbit deer?" Which is it? You tell me.

Rock 'n' roll vines

2008-10-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

Just when we thought manga cool was a tacky thing for academics and government agencies propagating the expansion of Japanese soft power as a subversive means towards hello kitty-faced world domination, a suburban sister and brother who draw for a living blend guitar amps, Freddie Mercury, and old dusty vinyl, a handsome hero, and le beau vin, reinvigorating the manga world through its courtship with the deep dank world of wines. To honor Yuko and Shin Kobayashi, creators of a comic, "Drops of the Gods," micropop has inaugurated the Micropop Taste Awards. First ever taste awards go to Yuko and Shin, purveyors of grapetastic taste.

See the nytimes for a more comprehensive review of their art in "Next Week, our Hero chooses a Médoc" by Onishi Norimitsu.

Cheers.

Pure Purr Genius

2008-10-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

Frick the cat has muy bueno style, and he knows it.
Released in 2006 by the label 45 rpm, the undying popularity of this curious piece of artistry among cult followers evidenced by its entry into the annual top 100s at independent radio stations such as KALX (UC Berkeley) attests to its pure ingenuity. Frick, pictured in all his hazy glory on the sleeve above, seduces with his lulling purrs accompanied by flamenco guitar on "El Gato" (side A), and Frick rocks you with some nasty garage rock on "Fuzzy wuz She," side B.
A micropop recommendation for the friekyest record of the decade.

Micropop's Chanteuse of the Week

2008-09-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

Brigitte Fontaine and Art Ensemble!?

WTF?

This unlikely combo, which, I guess isn't that weird if you think about it calmly since I guess the Art Ensemble of Chicago is so cool they're everywhere (especially Paris in les 60 années), and well-connected hip Parisians comme Brigitte get to rock out with cool people.

She sounds like she looks–the OG oldschool originatress of wispy whispering intimate close-mic singing, along with that other muse of Serge called Jane Birkin.

And then there's Art Ensemble.

Pourquois?

If I had my way, the Art Ensemble would go more all out on the recording. But the album has her face on it, so I guess they had to be the back-up band.

Album: Comme à la radio
Song: Comme à la radio
Year: 1969
micropop rating: ????? out of five stars

Check it out, and let me know what you think, because mmm is totally confused.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WfVir1_Edc

Old Time Music, Libeskind, and John Zorn

2008-09-13T21:55:00.000-07:00

While the Old Time Music Festival fiddles on in Berkeley, CA this weekend, across the billowing bay, composers and sound artists approach tradition at the new Contemporary Jewish Museum in the city of San Francisco in a very different way. In the 'yud' gallery, a "unique space featuring a 65-foot ceiling, 36 diamond-shaped skylights, and walls that converge at different angles," designed by Daniel Libeskind, John Zorn has curated a selection of new works by artists including Chris Brown, Z'ev, Lou Reed, Marina Rosenfield, Erik Friedlander, and Laurie Anderson (although Anderson's piece is situated in a different location from the other pieces). The laptop/electroacoustic pieces by Chris Brown and Marina Rosenfield were most engaging and made the best use of the spacial acoustics of architect Libeskind's fantastic space. They also seemed to attempt to make use of the spacializing possibilities offered by a the dimensions of the room. Others, like David Greenberger's narrative piece of music plus spoken word seemed to me as if they weren't especially exploring the specific problem of sound art. All in all, the exhibition is a rare work that focuses on the musical and sonic elements of the "sound" part of sound art. Traditional in theme, but contemporary in interpretation, micropop highly recommends a visit to the Aleph-Bet Sound Project, and has high hopes for future exhibits at the most exciting new museum in SF this year. And apparently, more works by Zorn himself are on the way...

Antonio Banderas' Song at Midnight

2008-09-06T16:46:00.000-07:00

Wow. This video left me speechless. Antonio Banderas (counter tenor?) and Sarah Brightman share the stage in this obscene explosion of Andrew Lloyd Weberdom gone wild.

Things to look out for include:
2:53 – zoom in to lusty crazy eyes;
3:25 – another close-up... the erect pinky

SFEMF 2008

2008-09-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

I went to the SFEMF festival last year. And I really dug Annea Lockwood. But the rest was kind of unbearable. I went again this year, now recovered after a year of hearing good and bad music in various places. I arrived feeling quite optimistic about hearing Ray Sweeten, Edmund Campion, and Tsujiko Noriko on the same bill. Wait, what? Could have might have may have been interesting, but I'm sorry to say, I strongly felt that it was quite a misguided programming decision. Ray Sweeten gave us 20 minutes of brown noise (as described by a certain DC), though composer FB mention that "it was interesting in the beginning." More memorably, we had a quasi Darmstadt moment when at the end of Sweeten's set, when a shout of "TOO LOUD!" came from the general vicinity of where long time West Coast electronic music guru DW was seated. Campion's theatrical piece was a collaboration with his poet and brother John Campion, performed by the illustrious Thomas Buckner. Fun but kinda weird, with interactive stuff between the performer and the click synched electronics. Then there was Tsujiko Noriko. Oh Nori-chan, we understand that you have a lovely innocent voice and that you like Bjork perhaps, but why give us the same song 6 times after we have already been held captive in Artaud theater for 2 hours. Cute. Pretty. Ha ha. Yay. Can I go home now? To be fair, she sounded fine. Her sultry electronic sound worlds can be dreamy. But I want to hear it on a CD, maybe at home, or maybe at Aoyama Fai sipping on some ridiculous colored drink swirling with cigarette smoke. But please, not in a squeaky chair in a concert/theater setting where I'm forced to direct my unfaltering attention towards her whispy karaoke.
Conclusion: Dear program committee of the SFEMF: Please avoid 3-hour concerts of programming that's so wrong that it makes music that is perfectly fine completely unbearable.
Micrpop Rating: ** out of 5 stars. Don't do it!

Omfug!!! Tribattery Bop

2008-08-28T00:37:00.000-07:00

Capturing the true spirit of down town nyc heterophonic rock, representing Tribeca and Battery Park City, this new gem of a self-released album--13 Original Stars (2007)--by self-proclaimed "America's Most Loved Community Band" is awesome. Especially the Ramones cover of Blitzkrieg Bop (click on link to hear samples from their album). Forget the Dorsey Band and the Hungry March Band. For all you kids down on that Bermuda Triangle South of Canal... Tribattery Pops is surely the shimmering herald of Tribeca as the new cultural capital of Lower Manhattan. Oh. Just you watch.

Tacita makes Tacet

2008-08-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

Micropop has been silent for a while, so meanwhile, I thought I'd direct you to the Dia:Beacon tacit thing–British artist Tacita Dean (what a great name) does Tacet I. Tacet II. Tacet III., aka, John Cage's 4'33" all over again with Merce Cunningham and video. Okay. So everyone is soooo over 4'33". BUT. Check it out. It was cool. Cunningham is the Elliot Carter of the dance world. Old. Historic. Monumental, but ALIVE! Take a guess at what Merce does in Dean's videos of him?! (Hint: the piece is called “Merce Cunningham performs Stillness (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33”). It's actually pretty poignant. And beyond the sentimental value of watching an old dancer "dance" the best he can, the experience of visually being in the dark, with only the sound of reel-to-reels and flickering images of Merce in his studio, it draws you in to a different kind of silence. What we lose in the zen-revelation value of 4'33" of ye olde days, we gain in a crusty, flickery, unsentimental way. Tacita is a little bit sneaky, a pretty bit clever, and very much drew me into her world of a 4'33" looped and multiplied by 6 and set in the age of a temporally confused present.

Check out the nytimes review: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/arts/design/22dia.html

Sounding Something...

2008-08-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

"People say that music is a temporal art, but it's not just a temporal art. It's also spatial too." Musicians from John Cage to Alvin Lucier to Otomo and, oh, just about anyone who works with speakers to sound music has made this statement. So when David Byrne created his sound installation piece Sounding the Building, currently on view at the Maritime Building in South Ferry (presented before in Stockholm, Sweden in 2005), he wasn't exactly leading the vanguard of sound art. The idea of literally making an instrument out of the spatial parameters of a space is a little bit different though. Many artists who work with sound use it to map a space (like batman), or create soundscapes that are contingent on the dimensions and the materials of the space. To say that the space is the instrument however, makes the space both the instrument and the space at the same time. Plus, as a visitor, you get to sit at the organ and play it too. Wow. Cool.

As a visual experience, Sounding the Building offered an awesome spectacle. Walking up to
the second floor of the totally decrepit back part of the Maritime Building, I encountered a huge open loft space strung with cables all connected to a single tiny church organ in the room.

Sonically though, I didn't find the experience quite as impressive. From various corners of the space, clanking sounds, rumbling motor sounds, and low wind instrument sounds came from the ceiling, radiators, and pipes in the space. After about 10 minutes of waiting in line to sit at the little organ though, the sounds became redundant. With only three kinds of sounds being produced--metal/percussion, wind, and motor, the sounds themselves are not that interesting. Spatially, they cover various corners of the room, but they are immobile. It's questionable as to whether we are supposed to understand the event as a musical experience in the first place, but if we are, it's really quite unsatisfying. Conceptually, the idea that infinite variations that come from the different players works well with the the situation--a public exhibition where musicians and non-musicians participate on equal grounds. Some people sit at the organ with an idea of what "music" might mean, others are simply fascinated by the machine, and still others approach the instrument as a control board. No guidelines for a "good performance" exist. The resulting sonic experience though, is that it's more interesting to look at the way different people approach the task of creating sound, rather than the instrument itself, or the sounds it emits. Maybe that's the real point of the exhibition. But if that's the case, the effects created through the interaction between a variable human element and the predictable sounds coming from the machine aren't similar enough or different enough to make it interesting.

As a result, for me, the piece is more powerful and more fascinating in my imagination, or as a concept and as an image. The picture on David Byrne's website is awe-inspiring with the machine sitting there, wired like a dangerous bomb in a silent room. From the picture, I can't imagine the sound of the room and that makes it all the more powerful. There's something irresistible about the inaudible sounds that come out of a really cool-looking object.

Sounding the Building invites different approaches and experiences of the piece. That is precisely both its strength and weakness. On the one hand, the installation presents an austere, omnipotent looking instrument ready to turn you too into an instrument. On the other, the freedom of the interactions it allows are maybe too free and friendly, so much that it loses its potency of its own message and its purpose as a work of art. In the case of this work, the discrepancies between image, sound, and purpose seemed to weaken the overall effect of the work. Still, the exhibition is well worth visiting. Who could resist the opportunity to sample a taste of world domination by sitting at a crazy church organ with blue wires extending up to a 20-foot ceiling?

Sounding the Building is on view at the Battery Maritime Building until August 24, 2008.

Darmstadt in nyc

2008-08-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

"Music of Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis"
Presented by the Marticians:
Alexander Lipowski, Gregory Beyer, Matthew Gold (percussion);
Erin Lesser (flute); Ann Steltenpohl (oboe); Rane Moore (clarinet); Miranda Sielaff (viola); Steven Beck (piano); Oren Fader (guitar); Bo Chang (mezzo-soprano); Michel Galante (conductor)
July 30, 2008 at The Julliard School

Three big guys of the twentieth century European avant-garde rejoined in spirit in room 309 Lincoln Center Plaza at the concert by the Marticians, a "percussion based ensemble" presenting the music of Boulez, Stockhausen, and Xenakis. Lead by percussionist Alex Lipowski and conductor Michel Galante, the brand new, new-music group consisted of members of Argento and other up-and-coming young musicians of the New York new music scene. The group presented rare live performances of Stockhausen's Kreuzspiel (1951) and Xenakis' Okho (1989) in the first half, and Boulez' classic work, Le marteau sans maître (1953-1955) in the second. The program felt a bit too heavy and somewhat predictable, almost like period re-enactment of a Darmstadt concert from the 1950s. And though a seminal work of twentieth-century European music, Boulez' looming 9 movement answer to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire comes across today a bit like a smug Oedipal nag. But the performances were precise yet spirited, even in Kreuzspiel, which is hardly a children's "game." Steven Beck braved through the notoriously difficult piano part with style, and Michel Galante lead the group as tightly-knit ensemble crucial to executing the meticulously calculated "pointillistic" work.
***out 5 stars

Image Forum Festival 2008

2008-07-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Yokohama Museum
Saturday, July 19, 2008

The annual Image Forum Festival showcases new works by international experimental film makers. The traveling festival moved to Yokohama after stops in Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka and Nagoya earlier this year. Today's programs, collectively presented as "Japan Tomorrow" consisted of award-winning works by young film makers from Japan. I caught Programs G and I, and left quite unimpressed. Images of the everyday and hand-held video recording apparatus offered in a view into the kind of film-making that begins at home, with you and me, not limited to the dreams and machines of big bad studios. The effect today... kinda daring, sorta heart-warming... and way too banal to make it anything but dumpy. Nothing dumpy chic about this. Better luck next year.

On a more positive note, the little installation outside the theater titled Portable Duchamp by Ryusuke Ito was cute, and in the spirit of Duchamp in the ipod age. Viewers were invited to peek through a pair of classy old binoculars mounted on a tripod. Attached to the binoculars were two ipod touches each showing an image of Duchamp's Given 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas. So bastardly. Finally a worthwhile use of the ipod touch (image of Duchamp installation below).

Program G

SUNDAY［金東薫 (Kim Donghoon)／ビデオ／10分／2007］奨励賞
新年10日間［栗原みえ (Kurihara Mie)／8ミリ／62分／2005-2007］奨励賞

Program I

合縁奇縁他生之縁ここは山根四号組
［青山佳世 (Aoyama Kayo)／ビデオ／58分／2007］入選
Mermaid［高田苑実 (Takada Sonomi)／ビデオ／4分／2007］入選
しあわせ［徳本直之 (Tokumoto Naoyuki)＋鎌田綾 (Kamata Aya)／ビデオ／22分／2007］寺山修司賞

Program H

LINE［大仁田弘志／ビデオ／14分／2007］入選
回帰［孫于景／ビデオ／34分／2007］入選
もここ［佐藤健人／ビデオ／27分／2007］奨励賞
UNCONSCIOUS［中島雄介／ビデオ／5分／2007］大賞

Micropop Awards (for Programs G and I)
Best Obession With Nikes of Different Colors, and Commitment to Weird Obsession for 3-year Duration:
Kurihara Mie for Shinnen Toka

Best Birth-of-a-Calf Scene
Aoyama Kayo for Aien Kien Tasei no En

Best Crush on Hot Sister-in-Law Film (with Unacceptable Music):
Tokumoto Naoyuki and Kamata Aya for Shiawase

Chiaroscuro Award:
Kim Donghoon for SUNDAY

Best Feet Given to Mermaid with the Dregs of Information Society Award:
Takada Sonomi for Mermaid

News Flash: Neck Face Sighting in Shibuya

2008-07-18T07:17:00.001-07:00

Across the street from Tower Records in Shibuya

microtrash

2008-07-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

Closely related to the spirit of micropop, I'm seeing more of microtrash these days. Not that using found objects is a new concept, but seeking out the obscene, filthy, and diseased... in a cute way... seems to be catching on. That's the theme of the latests bang by the Tokyo-based art collective Chim↑Pom exhibit at the newly re-opened gallery space, NADiff in Ebisu, Tokyo. Basically, the show consists of a flooded basement of the newly constructed building. Little Manneken Piss slowly trickles urine onto the floor, where hundreds of piece of trash, and PET bottles are floating or sinking amidst other bloated objects. Spray paint covers the walls with mindless non-threatening messages. Generally, the scene is puke-colored, but cute anyway. And so wrong. Amidst the mixed messages thrown around in pop culture today, from green capitalism (referred to as "eco" in Japan) to consumerism to "cuteness," from that obscure flooded basement, they scream, through homemade video, FUCK ECO! Or, more like, rrraaarrrr aaaaaaa aaarrrrrrrrArrr.
Chim Pom recently received a glimmering review in the NY Times recently.

Worst CD of the Year... No, EVER!!!

2008-07-17T18:03:00.000-07:00

幸せの可視　(shiawase no kashi)
Moon-light Record, Osaka (Dec. 2007)

Pikachu--the drum and vocal half of Osaka-based magical mystery international punk rock star duo Afrirampo heads in a new direction. Soon-to-be mother tries her hand at the art of singerly songwriterlyness, performing mostly on an un-tuned acoustic guitar singing songs with titles like "A girl is YURA YURA," "A elephant has nose on his back," and "You can seen the happy." Some tracks have drums that sound like they were recorded from 2 apartments away on the voice recorder function of my cellphone. It's not even an iPod. Other tracks have some wild vocal improvisations and synthesizer lines that could have been played on the "composer" function of your cell phone. To make it worse, each track is around 7 minutes long. A new era in the age of DIY, mobile recording studio arts?

It's the WORST album ever. Really.

This, I guess, is quite an accomplishment though, because 2 minutes into the album, I was totally convinced of the fact that I had never heard an album that was worse. Think about it--there's a lot of mediocre music out there. Some sad, some embarrassing, some meaningless, some pathetic. But something this BAD?! So bad it blows you away... so bad that it makes you question the meaning of art... life... the cosmos...

This may be a work of genius.

Or not.

And yet, Pikachu is like a combination of the coolness of Kim Gordon with the your-best-friendness of Kimya Dawson, and the open-your-heartness of Lavender Diamond. Delivered to you with tako-yaki flavor from the heart of Osaka. She's dripping wet, because when it rained, god drooled on her, or she's dripping wet because she woke up bawling after she dreamed that her mother died, and she's dancing in the sky shining brighter than the other (more famous) Pikachu (who caused little Japanese children to have seizures with his amazing strobe light way of being). Hanshin Tigers have nothing on this lady.

I may never listen to this album again, but it has forever made its mark on my heart.

Oh. Yeah, and it's a CD-R, and it comes with a sunflower seed taped to the cover of the sheet of glossy paper that is the CD case... so that your dreams may blossom so that you can "See the Happy."

映像作家徹底研究 6 - Experimental Music and Film at Super Deluxe

2008-07-13T08:33:00.000-07:00

Film Makers' Workshop 6

Music: Otomo Yoshihide
Film: Ito Ryusuke
Presented by Yasunori Ikunishi

A meeting of big names in the experimental film and music worlds took place at Super Deluxe tonight in front of a full house. Ito's ultra high-speed, stunningly low-tech, almost-silent film reels were accompanied by Otomo's junk-yard orchestral assemblage with a turntable, guitar, and oh so much more. Using found footage and found objects spliced together to make their artistic worlds, Otomo and Ito seemed to come from a similar place. The message is distorted, objects are mangled, and there is sonic and visual rubble. But, Ito's choice of bright colors seemed to offer some kind of hope for happiness though maybe already lost in the remains of his impossibly corroded images. Otomo meanwhile mixed Merzbow-level noise with crystal clear guitar tones and sine tones that cut through the sounds collected by the dangling contact mic swinging above and around the turntable. In good Otomo style, all this was produced with unexpectedly precise deliberation, it seemed. It takes a skilled manipulator of noise to be able to draw out these kinds of complex human emotions from somewhere in the middle of all that noise. Think about Wall-e.

More than just the individual performances though, the inter-media synthesis seemed to be happening. The result wasn't just a combination of sound and image, but a sort of haptic experience with sound emanating from multichannel speakers, bouncing off the walls along with the unrelenting blinking images of cartoons, explosions, porn, chanbara samurai films among the undecipherable colored mess. In short, I was assured something cosmically grand was taking place. The difference between this and Wall-e though, is that the question is not about whether this music can make people happy. But that's fine. That kind of metaphysical problem has to be dealt with by something or someone even grander... like, the Creator. Or Wall-e.

Solid.

Rating: **** out of 5 stars

Test Tone vol. 35 - Festival of Alternate Tunings

2008-07-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Line-up:
1. Katchmare aka Nick Hoffman
2. Otani Yoshio, Yamamoto Tatsuhisa, L?K?O?, Cal Lyall
3. Miclo Diet
Visuals by onnacodomo!!!!!

Half way through the first set, when I was beginning to question how many live laptop improvisers it takes for us to realize we've got to move beyond this, I started to stare off into the ether, or actually, the wall behind the laptop performer Mr. Katchmare, and understood--aha! this series, Test Tone, is precisely about collaboration and "experiments in music" (as the sub-heading of the series indicates). So, moving my attention away from the stage to the other (arguably more real) stage, I saw onnacodomo--a trio of industrious mad video scientists--waving all kinds of objects like mirrors, prints, decorated cassettes, string, a magnifying glass, a cup, a crystal geyser bottle, at two hand-held video recorders. The person in the middle operated a kind of mixing board. If this sounds tacky, it's not. It looks great. In the spirit of improv, and collaboration, the video performers interact constantly with the live sound. If they weren't so damn faithful in responding directly all the time (i.e., tremolo on guitar-->shaking object; noise-->busy visuals; aka "mickey-mousing"), it would make for a more interesting counterpoint, I think.

Mr. Katchmare, could have used some more interesting samples and thought about balance and rhythm in his performance to make his use of "ma" more effective.

The second act started with some nifty solo drumming by Yamamoto Tatsuhisa. His playing style reminded me of Susie Ibarra's although he went for some more straight-ahead rock grooves at times. Still, the delicate and playful kind of free drumming was a welcome alternative to the aggressive showy styles prevalent in so many free jazz groups. Tatsuhisa was joined by turntablist L?K?O? who played in a similar sort of complementary style was nice. The addition of saxophonist Otani Yoshio, and guitarist Cal Lyall completed the quartet.

Miclo Diet was another laptop performer, who ended the evening with some more club/noise/glitch sounds.

I like the idea of the Test Tone series, which puts on a new line-up once a month at Super Deluxe. It's free, so you can't get mad if you hate it (and you can just get up and leave) and all you have to do to show your love is buy good beer at the bar. It's a deal.

Link to Test Tone: http://www.soundispatch.com/ttsnews/home/test-tone-vol-35/

Rating: *** out of 5 stars

Review: ギターの日キター！！！Guitaristival @ Super Deluxe in Nishiazabu

2008-07-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

The event: 20 guitarists, four sets, 8 hours of music, and a full house at SDLX on June 29, 2008.
Highlights: Weird ways of playing the guitar, collaborations between people like Chiku and Uchihara, and younger sleeper hits like Hannoda
Usual suspects: Noise, noise, noise, and improv--some fine, some boring, but are we still not through 33 years after Metal Machine Music, and god knows how many Merzbow albums!?!!!!
Nice Surprises: People not doing noise

Special Micropop Awards:
Beautiful hair award:
Keiji Haino for his bobmullet

Somebody stop him award:
Keiji Haino for über self-indulgence

Best unassuming guitar wunderkind:
Taku Hannoda for silent subtle and shockingly sweet style

Classy and classic in a ROVO sort of way:
Seichi Yamamoto--I guess he's the Boss

Lovechild of Devendra Banhart and Chara, god child of Gertrude Stein:
Toshiaki Chiku, an middle aged man with the tenderness of Lavender Diamond

Sweetest most exquisite noise:
Imai Toshio trio

Funky, but in need of fashion police warning:
Yoshitake EXPE for really expensive-looking dreadlocks

Man to achieve most sounds intentionally from guitar and effects, and who also happens to be a great bossa nova guitarist:
Uchihashi Kazuhisa

Somebody stop him, no, really, award:
MURATORIX. We don't need to talk about it.

Lick my arse, John Cage:
Yoshihiro Kawasome.
"Hear the ma, hear the ma... it's the space, the space" and he just keeps going

Two time air guitar world champion (for real!) and budding belly dancer (at age 36):
Yosuke Oochi of owarai comedy duo, Dainoji

The Line-up:
Set 1:
Imai Kazuo, Keiichi Miyashita, AxSxE
Nakabayashi Kirala, Hannoda Taku
MURATORIX
Set 2:
Natsuki Kido, Mon Kumagai
Tetsuji Akiyama, Munehiro Narita
Yoshihiro Kawasome
Set 3:
Yoshitake EXPE, Keiji Haino
Seiichi Yamamoto, Kato Takayuki
Toshiaki Chiku, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Takashi Ueno
Set4:
EVERYONE (in different combinations)

Overall Rating: **** (5 stars highest)
Yay for younger musicians doing really interesting new things (like Kawasome and Hannoda). Boo for not even having one woman guitarist the whole evening (Haino's beautiful hair does NOT make this okay)

Link to guitaristival website: http://guitarkuitar.web.fc2.com/

Welcome to micropop!

2008-01-05T21:58:00.000-08:00