Japanese New Music festival, London 2005

The concert took place in 93 Feet East, a bar/club on Brick Lane, home of many fine and absurdly cheap Indian restaurants, and notorious in the late 19th century as the stalking ground of Jack the Ripper. It was a cold and misty night in the heart of the old East End, but a rather good plate of mixed pakoras followed by chicken jalfrezi with pilau rice, washed down with mango lassi and a spicy chai to follow, kept the November chill at bay. As this is the prog archive I suppose I should get on with reviewing the music, but if you're ever in London and you like Indian food you now know where to go.

This was the 4th Japanese New Music Festival to hit Europe, and featured 3 musicians playing in 7 different projects. They were Yoshida Tatsuya (Ruins and Koenjihyakkei amongst others) on drums, percussion, vocals, sampler and things (see Akaten below), Tsuyama Atsushi on guitar, bass, vocals, recorder, flute and things and Kawabata Makoto on guitar, violin, glockenspiel and vocals (both core members of Acid Mothers Temple). Kawabata looks like Jerry Garcia would have done had he been born Japanese, while Tsuyama could be Tokyo's Phil Lesh. Yoshida, but for his Magaibutsu t-shirt, looks like a Tokyo salaryman who wandered into the wrong club by mistake. The whole event mixed remarkable musicianship with the kind of near slapstick humour Gentle Giant, Gong and Jethro Tull all displayed onstage at their peak.

First up was Seikazoku, an improvising unit featuring all 3 players. This group has been going since 1996 and uses a lot of acoustic instruments to produce a kind of prog/world/jazz hybrid. For most of this part of the show Yoshida played a darabouka, a North African drum which can also be heard on Robert Plant's Mighty Rearranger album. The other two musicians started on flute and violin, and then they started playing their electric guitars simultaneously with the acoustic instruments (a good trick if you can manage it), plus Tsuyama used a soprano recorder as a slide. As impressive as it was seeing somebody play flute and guitar simultaneously, to say nothing of his oppo doing the same on guitar and violin, there was little of the intricate acoustic interplay that Seikazoku are capable of at their best. Even so, it was a good opening to the show.

Kawabata retired backstage to make way for Akaten, a long standing collaboration between Yoshida and Tsuyama. Describing themselves as a convenience store punk band with the motto 'irresponsibleness', they use contact mikes and samplers on everyday objects to produce the backing for songs which, in Japan, largely consist of shouting brand names over the resulting noise. The act was slightly modified for European audiences, though the comedy element survived intact. They started with contact mikes on the zippers of their jeans, throwing outrageous Jackie Chan moves at each other all the while. This got big laughs, as did further song/routines involving a chinese radish being grated ('Sorry, no fish and chips!'), a bottle of red wine and 2 glasses ('kanpai!') and finishing with them cleaning their teeth. They were a big hit with a by now slightly bewildered audience, many of whom had only come for Acid Mothers Temple.

Tsuyama exited, Kawabata re-emerged and Yoshida sat down behind his drum kit for Shrinp Wark, an improvising duo who take their name from This Heat's Shrink Wrap. Yoshida collaborated with Charles Hayward (the results can be heard on the Escape From Europe: Double Agents CD) and has a similar ability to play as though each of his limbs has a mind of its own, while Kawabata used effects pedals and all manner of devices to coax otherworldy sounds from his axe. Improvisation is a risky thing, but this was mesmerising stuff by two highly skilled practitioners, and hopefully this project will continue and develop for a long time to come. 

The first half closed with the a capella trio Zubizuva X, whose vocal techniques take in Mongolian throat singing, Gregorian chant, doo wop and much else besides. Highly eccentric but also very disciplined and focussed, this was another segment of the show which left many of the audience perplexed but which went down well with the remainder (not including the big bloke behind me whose first words to his friends were 'Where's the exit?' when the house lights went on).

Following a short interval Yoshida came on for Ruins Alone. Since the departure of Sasaki Hisashi Yoshida has performed either with guest bassists (on the wittily titled 'Bassist Wanted' tour of the USA) or solo with sampled bass but live drums and vocals. This was a mightily intense solo set, about 20 minutes long but with more ideas than many bands manage in an entire evening. The repertoire took in the Vrressto, Pallaschtom and Tzomborgha albums, plus bits of songs by Koenjihyakkei and Korekyojin. About half way through the Classical Music Medley was included, although sadly the Progressive Rock Medley was missed out. Yoshida plays a pretty standard single bass drum Pearl kit, but manages to sound like he's got Carl Palmer's and Terry Bozzio's kits welded together - plus he sings at the same time. A truly breathtaking performance which pleased prog heads and metal heads alike.

The now extremely sweaty Yoshida left the stage for a well earned break and the AMT offshoot Zooky took over - this is the Acid Mothers Troubadours offshoot, in which they play their unique interpretations of European troubadour songs from the middle ages (including a frankly obscene but hilarious take on the Romeo and Juliet story) plus bizarre deconstructions of well known rock anthems. Following a lengthy excursion through days of yore, Tsuyama held their CD aloft and said 'No copyright - sorry Mr Jimmy Page!' before they launched into a brilliant Mongolian throat singing version of Immigrant Song, with Kawabata playing his guitar with a violin bow to produce the sound of a horse head fiddle. Not all their cover versions worked so well - Stairway to Heaven was very short, which was a relief, while Eat That Phonebook was totally unrecognisable - but Smoke on the Water played a la Captain Beefheart more than made up for these shortcomings.

And finally Acid Mothers Temple SWR brought proceedings to a fitting and extremely loud climax. This is the psychedelic power trio which makes all others pale in comparison - if Susano-No-Mikito (Japanese god of thunder) had a house band, they'd sound like this. White noise free form freak out melts into achingly beautiful psychedelic jam melts into punishingly heavy speed metal melts into intergalactic space rock, all in the space of a few bars. Tsuyama's bass packs up so he throws it against the wall before smashing it in two and plugging in aother guitar, picking up the music again without missing a beat. Yoshida gets medieaval on his tom toms, while Kawabata throws outrageous shapes while shredding in a manner fit to make Steve Vai and Joe Satriani burn their guitars in frustration. Just when you think it can't get any more intense, Yoshida unleashes another barrage of triplets on his snare drum and they crank it up another notch. Amazingly, it's all over in what is objectively about half an hour but subjectively seems like several lifetimes. There's a brief encore - an English flautist whose name I didn't catch joined them, with Tsuyama also playing flute and doing a pretty good Ian Anderson impression, and then it really is all over. Time to buy the CDs and head out into the freezing fog.

This was a remarkable show, up there with Faust and The Residents for sheer out-there weirdness coupled with brilliant musicianship and innovation. If you ever get the chance to catch any of these various projects live, make sure you don't miss it. Incomparable stuff, subarishii desu!