We are just back from a mad tour of Japan and we have seen and heard some extraordinary music.
The kind that rips your eyeballs out and makes you question whether you
even understand what music is. The couple of Junzo played at the
storied club in Tokyo and blew my mind, emotive and alleviative.
I sat like a crazy asylum lunatic, giggling across the full set. Nobody
could hear me because this was the noisiest act of over twenty-five
acts I saw on tour. I was giggling at the sheer balls and the fantastic
attack on the entire body. I could not tell if my heart was thrashing
or if it was actually the attack from Astro's moog that was shaking my
full being.
Had a bit of a nightmare on the second night, my credit card payment was taken early so I ran out of cash. Luckily after a quick search online I found that I could borrow via a cash advance loans company in the USA without having to fill out any paperwork. I received a thousand bucks in my bank account the next day and I was able to pull some cash out of an ATM. Phew! Would have been a long trip back home otherwise.
You might see that Junzo's amp was dimed and still it just
hardly fit into the wall of alien sounds that dropped from the house PA.
I looked over at the sound man in the middle of the set and he sat
with a fan, making an attempt to blow some life into the overheating PA.
This is the type of set you come to Japan to hear music for.
Everybody always asks facetiously, why is Japanese music so cool?
Well, that's why. For one thing it is the volume. It's a sort
of meditation that may only be learned by experiencing. And, it is not
respectful to stroll out on a show in Japan. Take the attack, let it
batter you in a way you did not feel was practical. Let the sound drive
you to a place you have never been. And then, in the middle of it,
float outside your body, forget where you are, explore the ether. And
when you settle into your body and realize where you have been, that you
forgot about the music and the place and the time, giggle your ass off
and dig the sounds that blew your corporeal body to bits and left only
your wits floating, changeless, like Japan, 1000 years of age. |
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