When Japanese noise meets Sean Lennon...
...magic happens
Sean Lennon tears it up
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A CMJ showcase for the blissfully psychedelic Japanese label Heartfast Records—held on Friday afternoon at Bruar Falls—absolutely killed, despite lots of empty space and the sleepy atmosphere that is a natural result of drinking beer at 2 p.m. The lineup included a few notable names—James Husband (Of Montreal), The Ladybug Transistor, Fake Male Voice (the solo project of TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe). But the real awe-inspiring act was Mi-gu, a Japanese band making its first-ever appearance in America.
Mi-Gu singer/drummer (and sometime-collaborator with Cornelius) Yuko Araki tends to speak-sing her comically quotidian lyrics—about how she’s scared of bugs, for example—while guitarist Hirotaku Shimizu spins tantalizing webs of noise. There’s a bit of Cibo Matto in the chirpy volatility of the vocals, but Shimizu’s guitar style calls to mind a fellow Japanese guitarist, Michio Kurihara, in the way it toggles between classic psych and the austere doom metal of Japanese bands like Boris (with whom Kurihara cut an album, 2007’s Rainbow).
And speaking of Cibo Matto: The proceedings only grew more interesting when Sean Lennon strapped on a bass guitar. For those there to gawk, Lennon’s choice of uniform—military jacket, round glasses—certainly alluded to another guy with the same last name. (Not Julian.) The Lennon in question has made a nice musical career out of fringe collaborations, and this was no exception. At one point Lennon traded guitars with Shimizu and proceeded to blow the audience away with a nearly 10-minute-long exercise in Japanese-metal riffage. [Update: The song was a loose cover of Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain," but it spiraled into something else completely. See the video below.] It was an onslaught, to be sure, but a particularly pretty and textured one; it never sounded just loud (though it was), and it always came across as carefully considered (even when it probably wasn't). After the show, Lennon and the members of Mi-gu hopped into a red Subaru station wagon with Vermont plates and drove away, a pleasant grace note to a mind-bending performance.
As for Fake Male Voice, the project of TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe: Minimal is the word, more specifically the spoken word. Fake Male Voice, as the name suggests, is a prolonged exercise in vocal manipulation, with Adebimpe transforming sung and spoken phrases into melodic components, accompanied by a drum machine. Some of these experiments sounded like sketches for future TV On The Radio concepts, others like elusive meditations on the nature of vocal performance. As a matter of process, it was intriguing; as music to nod your head to, it was hard to grasp—especially after the whiplash of Mi-gu’s striking U.S. premiere.
