When I was in Japan, I went to concerts as frequently as I could, sometimes as often as every weekend. When Sonic Youth came on their NYC Flowers & Ghosts tour, I saw them with OOIOO opening (Green & Gold had just come out). Unfortunately I couldn't sneak my MD recorder into that show, because it was just astonishing... both bands, really, but OOIOO in particular. Their playing was like virtuoso level, with every nuance from the album tracks executed perfectly... in fact, during one song, Yoshimi actually made the band stop and start over again because she felt one of the transitions hadn't gone right... I don't think anyone else had noticed!
I am pretty sure that it was within a week or so of the Sonic Youth show that Lee Renaldo played a weird little improv gig with avant-turntablist Christian Marclay, with DJ Eye from Boredoms following. I managed to record the whole Renaldo and Marclay set (posting next), and 30 minutes of DJ Eye's set... as I mention in my original notes, the last train out of Kyoto back to Hirakata was leaving.. slightly after midnight as I recall. Eye's performance was inspiring and unique, with pitched-up chanting and bird calls, and people later told me about crushing hiphop beats played over bagpipes, although I didn't stay for that part unfortunately. The sheer volume of the set was over-powering though, and actually pretty unpleasant. The wall of sound made my ears hurt, such that I recall trying to wrap my arm around my head to shield my ears while still clutching my stupid minidisc microphone, and when the bird calls started it was like a deafening screech of pain!! As was common at the Club Metro, the crowd had a fair share of cute young Japanese women, none of them wearing earplugs, looking bored and not at all bothered by the cacophony. My ears rang for a couple days after this show!
Speaking of wall of sound, I also later saw DJ EYE spinning as an opener for Medeski Martin & Wood, this time more beat-oriented stuff, including some tracks off the first couple Rebore records. This time the problem was the BASS... so loud, my eyelashes were vibrating and made my eyes itch!! I had never experienced such a phenomenon before, and I literally had to move from the dancefloor, further back into the club to find a space where the bass was tolerable! Do Japanese ears work differently???
Original notes, included as text file:
"DJ Eye (from Boredoms)
recorded live at The Metro in Kyoto, Japan, March 25.2001
30:13, 49.8M VBR mp3 made with CoolEdit
notes:
Excerpt of a live DJ set by Eye Yamatsuka from Boredoms. I had to leave to catch the last train, so I didn't get to record the whole performance. The voice heard at the beginning is Lee Renaldo (from Sonic Youth), who performed with Christian Marclay before Eye took the stage (available as a seperate file). This recording does no justice to the sheer LOUDNESS of this performance. It was truly ear-piercing. But it sounds lovely, doesn't it? :)
Recorded with a Sony MZ-R900 minidisc recorder using a Sony ECM-MS957 microphone"
HERE
OK, so I found these files either on Napster or Soulseek way back in '02ish. The thing is, the info file refers to 7 Vo 7, but the title of the mp3 says Uoredoms... so I'm not sure which set this is! Its a very trippy, tribal, plodding, echoing jam, with Eye chanting spacy vocals over what sounds like sitar, guitar and Yoshimi's pummeling drums.. It is an audience recording, and lasts a little over 30 minutes, and sounds pretty good, but has that muffled/distant quality that you would expect from an AUD recording.
