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I don’t have too many self-imposed rules of thumb that govern the way I live, but one to which I absolutely hew the line is this: if a Japanese band is playing nearby, go see them. I’m not sure why that is, but odds are heavily stacked in your favor that it’s certainly going to be an excellent performance, and scarred eardrums/blown cerebral tissue courtesy of ZENI GEVA, RUINS, BORIS, ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE, GHOST, KEIJI HAINO, MONO, et al bear testimony to this guideline. As it’s been since 1994 I’ve had the pleasure of seeing EYE YAMATSUKA with or without THE BOREDOMS, this was certainly a no-brainer. Turns out a lot of people thought that, and desperate ticket seekers roamed the sidewalk outside the club in search of their miracle. In the ensuing time since I saw them, the band’s direction has taken a sharp and lasting turn away from the energy-laden spazz-core and noise which effortlessly spewed from every orifice (I salute the A&R guy who somehow convinced Reprise/Warners to sign and release not one but four records from them!), and instead has set the controls for the blazing heart of the sun.
The start of the show had a very ritualistic feel about it: the stage was jammed tight with three full-size drum kits set off in a circle, and off to one side was a bank of electronics and some mics. Behind that, at the back of the stage, was the sevena. What, you’ve never heard of a sevana? Neither had I. I’ll get to that in a bit. Anyway, the show started in pitch black darkness, with eYe in the center of the drum circle, handling two glowing light balls, one in each hand. He’d swing them up and down, alternately crouching and standing, yowling to summon the god of rhythm. The god came, and brought friends. YOSHIMI and the other two drummers made their way over to their stations, and the beast sparked to life. Most bands can’t find one good drummer. so when you are in the presence of one who has three, you know you are in for a sonic treat. And despite a walking cast protecting a broken foot, most front men can’t match the exuberance and shamanistic properties of eYe, who would take the reins of this heavy, throbbing, hypnotic organism and lead it to places the awed crowd never knew existed. As the drummers powered a roiling wave of sonic gush, eYe would occasionally add to stew a heady mix of synth gunk, electronic freakery, and primal howls, some heavily processed. Oh, and the sevena was brought to full bear. Comprised of seven guitar bodies fused into one single massive body, it featured four necks on one side and three on the other. Obviously open-tuned to different chords, when struck it would make a bell sound as eYe played it by banging one or more necks. Harmonics, subharmonics, hyperharmonics…the neighborhood dogs must have been howling. Fifty transcendent minutes later, the first song was over. They played another twenty-ish minutes in a similar vein, with Yoshimi sometimes turning away from her kit to tend to her small keyboard. If I could commandeer a time machine, click the decades back by a count of three or four, and drop my corporeal being into a POPUL VUH or AMON DUUL concert, a DNA test would likely prove paternity to what I just witnessed.
Longtime acquaintance and sometime collaborator (cf. TV Shit) THURSTON MOORE opened the evening as NORTHAMPTON WOOLS, an improvistional guitar duo which also included BILL NACE of VAMPIRE BELT. Sitting on chairs and facing each other with guitars set on laps, under dim blue lighting they slowly unspooled a gentle then prickly humid cloud of noise, using bowls, toothbrushes, drumsticks and other props to tease and extrude sounds from the guitars.
The frenzied parts were classic T Moore raveup, but the more interesting part was when he jammed a drumstick on the neck up from the bridge, creating two different lengths of strings to use, and the effect was like a ghostly harp as the strings were gingerly plucked.
