2012.10.07 ノムラセントラルステーション / AZMA shoegaze explosion / 百蚊 / ムーズムズ @ 名古屋 K・D ハポン
Still choked I never made it to Eternal Rock City, the hurt was assuaged by the opportunity to catch hyacca play in a tiny club in Nagoya called K・D ハポン (KD Japon).This event was curated by a guy who lives in Mie prefecture named Nobita.
Aside from hyacca I knew nothing about any of the other bands performing. Also, I never told hyacca that I'd be coming to see their show. So when I was scoping the area near KD Japon a couple hours before the show, while walking along Chuo street I hear a "STEEEEEEVE!" It was Harajiri (Ba) and the rest of hyacca!
Harajiri: "What the hell are you doing here?!" me: "Obviously to watch you guys play!" Harajiri: "Daaaamn." *smiles all around"
They were roaming around the area as well looking for a place to eat. I knew a great pasta place nearby named ひろし (Hiroshi) so we headed there and I treated them to an early dinner. I had spaghetti in mentaiko sauce topped with chicken karaage. F*cking. Hell. Yeah! Fukuoka repruzent!
On the way back to KD Japon we passed by AZMA shoegaze explosion. They invited us to go to a maid cafe with them but we had just ate and politely declined the invite. Harajiri has booked AZMA at his livehouse (Utero) in Fukuoka before and told me that their performance would be badass.
Inside the club, ノムラセントラルステーション (Nomura Central Station) were still in the middle of sound check. The first thing that grabs you in the nuts with this band is they have FOUR drummers. One of them's a girl and another one's a transvestitie. And in actuality, they had only four drummers for this particular gig but they normally have FIVE! (note: this alone makes it impossible to bring NOMURA CENTRAL to Canada for NMFT). Tonight they had one Gt/Vo, 2nd guitar, bass player and four drummers for a total of seven members.
Basically, all of the members play in other bands and Nomura Central is just a side-project they goof around in from time to time. Which is unfortunate because as the following video attests they can be incredibly awesome:
(different show and not my clip)
Before I describe Nomura Central I need to digress and talk about the venue itself, KD Japon, which is utterly fantastic. The sound and acoustics suck but the ATMOSPHERE is unbeatable! First of all KD Japon is inside a very narrow two story building. Almost like if you took a very tiny barn and converted it into a barspace for live shows. The performance space is on the ground floor and there is no stage. There is very little real estate to begin with and much of it is taken up by the bar, a staircase to the 2nd floor and a merchandise table. Needless to say it's pretty cramped with a max of 20-30 people that could fit as audience members on the ground floor. Upstairs is just a balcony that might hold another 30 people. Across from the balcony there's a ladder from the ground floor that leads up to a tiny alcove. This alcove will come up when it's time to describe hyacca's acrobatic set.
Watching from the balcony you get an AMAZING bird's eye view of the band. Perfect for taking videos like this:
As I mentioned, one of the drummers in the band is a full-on transvestite. In this clip he is putting on a mini SM show by performing shibari on himself right in the middle of one of their songs. You can hear Nobita cracking up in the background.
Afterwards I moved downstairs for a different angle:
Nomura Central Station blew my mind. Just a really fun band that drive through a whirlwind of genres from pop to classic rock to doo wop to jazz to full-on screamo hardcore. And the trannie dude was f*cking hilarious! Here he is sprawled out on the floor at the end of the set:
And this is his home-made drum kit made out of buckets and bike horns.... and a DOG HOUSE for a BASS DRUM!!!!!!!!!!
Unequivocally, righteously DOPE!!
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AZMA shoegaze explosion were the 2nd band up and Nomura Central Station set the entertainment bar astronomically high.
However, AZMA didn't disappoint as they cranked the volume up to Spinal Tap eleven and then somehow jimmied the amp headers even more to vol 15. A HUGE wall of shoegaze swirling noise and simple mosh-inducing power chords played with a ton of emotion. They remind me of envy. Nowhere near as good as musicians at this stage but loud as hell and with plenty of heart.
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Third batter up were the almighty hyacca.
They said they didn't play too well at Eternal Rock City and wanted to reddem themselves tonight at KD Japon. Another funny story is that at Studio ZOT Goshima of hyacca accidentally took tacobonds Naoki's guitar case by mistake. At this moment tacobonds were touring England with Naoki stuck with Goshima's guitar case and vice versa.
F*ck! I could have sworn I jotted down the setlist on my iPhone but I guess I hadn't. Anyhow, they started off with a jizz-inducing version of "Angel Fish" They also played (in no particular order) "Riot" "34 dance"
"Yuneko" (The new song that's on Ian's "Dancing After 1 A.M." compilation):
"Stress" (arguably my favorite song by hyacca! The outro is mindbending instrumental bliss)
"telephone number" (occasionally tied with "stress" as favorite song by hyacca.)
And as per usual they ended off with a manic version of "Hanazono" where Hiromi Kajiwara went nuts climbing onto tables and chairs, throwing shoes at the audience and climbing way up onto the 2nd floor alcove as depicted here:
Great f*cking set. Although I think they played even better in Canada during NMFT3. The Montreal show at Lambi is probably the most entertaining performance I've ever seen and the Rivoli show with the crowd surfing guitar a close 2nd.
Nobita (the curator of the show) was going nuts dancing to hyacca. And if I wasn't busy taking video footage I would have joined him.
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Batting clean-up was ムーズムズ (MuuzuMuzu) from Kyoto. If I had jetted back to Nagoya station right after hyacca's set I could have made the last shinkansen back to Tokyo. I didn't have a place to stay overnight in Nagoya so I had to think long and hard about staying to watch Muuzu. But Nobita and hyacca insisted that I stay and drink with them at the uchiage and Nobita arguably saved the best band for last in Muuuuuzu.
I'm glad I stayed to watch ムーズムズ. Throughout the set there were chants and shouts of "Moooooooooozu" from the audience in all sorts of variations and pitches. Ian Martin who had come all the way from Tokyo with his wife Kaname described ムーズムズ 's appearance as the archetypal Kyoto band. (ie nerdy hipsters)
The band was an all-male 3pc with guitar/vocalist, keyboardist and drummer. The drummer played with such a smooth, occasionally powerful jazzy style while the keyboardist utilized three different keyboards/synths. Personally, I think three synths was redundant and all he needed was the Nord 88 but I guess some tones can only be achieved with certain keybaords. Either that or he was trying to show off. :)
The singer started off by emceeing (note: I got sick of waiting 5-6 hrs for each video to upload onto Youtube so these clips of ムーズムズ are from other shows posted by other people)
Then he'd grab his guitar and sing in a manner that reminds me of a mellower version of Sasaguchi from 太平洋不知火楽団.
These guys were awesome. Like a hybrid of Special Others, BECK and uhnellys.
Each band that played at Nobita's event was extremely entertaining in their own way. I'm glad I stayed till the very end.
Especially since the uchiage (after-party) was even crazier than the live performances.
The izakaya we went to was just next door to KD Japon. Here's Ian clowning around by the entrance:
The owner of the izakaya was a sexually uber-charged cougar in her mid-forties (?fifties) who had no shame in littering the establishment with sketchy drawings and menus chock-full of sexual inuenedos. The potato salad consisted of two mounds of potato salad side-by-side with cherry tomatos as ultra-perky nipples. But most of the stuff was tongue-in-cheek, mild and not too depraved.
The only things depraved were the customers in the bar... meaning us... specifically the Chikubi brothers: Goshima (hyacca) and the dude with the bowl-cut whose name I just forgot. Goshima would constantly tweak bowl-cut's right nipple after which bowl-cut would convulse in ecstacy yelling "Fantastic!" Later on bowl-cut got buck-naked, walked outside and lay down on the sidewalk, returning inside just before a cop car drove by.
Apparently, an uchiage in Nagoya isn't an uchiage until someone takes his/her clothes off. Apparently, next time I bring hyacca to Canada I'm obligated to bring Goshima's chikubi brother along. (j/k) There will be no nipple-tweaking during NMFT uchiages in Canada. But if we do a tour finale in Nagoya I guess it's anything goes.
note: bowl-cut is a super-nice guy who plays in a band himself in Nagoya
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After the uchiage, Nobita hooked me up with a room at the same hotel hyacca and AZMA shoegaze were crashing at. The hotel was dirt cheap. Why? Because apparantly it's infamous for being haunted. But I was so tired I ignored the twin sisters with power tools and blood stained dresses whispering "レッドラム" and fell soundly asleep. When I woke up I was missing a kidney.