Kyushu in Two Parts – pt. 2 Noise of Daydream

Kitakyushu 5/31

I went up with this dude Mitch to see a show called HardReality: Noise of Daydream at Gallery Soap in Kokura, Kitakyushu this past Sunday and got a whole lot more than I bargained for. I knew that Zero Reality was playing, I was introduced to them through Mitch, and on top of being a nice bunch of guys, they are also out of their minds, particularly during their set. So, I knew about that, and I assumed there would be a few other bands. Indeed there were; the opening band was called a two-piece called HALAS pauses in the dark of hope.. I really couldn’t tell you what that name is about and, having talked to them a bit after the show, I don’t think they really could either. Ha, but that doesn’t matter, cause they were great. I’d definitely see them again. The cool part is these guys are both 3rd year college students, and were really shy and goofy. They would go into ‘irasshaimase’-style bowing fits whenever I mentioned a band that they liked–

“um, Hella to iu bando suki?”

“OHHH haihaihaihai, Hella, yes yes yes”

“Gorilla Biscuits?”

*30 head-bows in 10 seconds*

and so on

Seriously though, they kicked ass. Anyway, their myspace is here and it’s a shame the chances of them coming to America any time soon are about as good as Sombrero Fallout touring Europe, but you never know.

So I won’t do a play-by-play of the whole show. Zero Reality’s set was good, but ended with some really punishing high frequency stuff, kind of like Government Alpha, which gives you a really nauseated feeling if it goes on for too long. Kind of cool, but also kind of, yeah, nauseating. But right, so I’ll get right to the main event that took me totally by surprise. I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen after Zero Reality finished their set, then I see a guy who looks exactly like Keiji Haino coming out of the bathroom. I follow him across the (very small) gallery space with my eyes, and then look over at Mitch, and asked to look at the flyer. Well, Keiji Haino (rather, Haino Keiji)’s name in kanji is this：　灰野敬二,

so maybe you can forgive me for not realizing who that was at the outset. But anyway, what a rad surprise that was, I mean, of all the Japan-fantasies to come true, this is up there with doing karaoke with Merzbow, or playing pachinko with Yamatsuka Eye, so on and so on. First, Haino-san (as everyone reverently called him) played a somewhat short solo set that I mistook for the headline set. It was cool, he had those 3 theremin things that you always see, he played some classically fucked up blues songs that followed the Haino-standard weird chord-brutal screech-same weird chord format, in the best way, and did some horrible things to a harmonica. If this was it I would have been solid.

It wasn’t! Ha, the headline set was actually a collaborative live multimedia piece between Haino and Ichiraku Yoshimitsu, who goes by dora video (ドラびでお). Yoshimitsu plays a drum set with sensors that run through a laptop onto a projection screen, and his drumming triggers various flashing images to appear. This is a great performance in itself, but with Haino right in there with his guitar and all his other cool gear, it’s a serious experience. All the guys in Zero Reality were losing their shit, describing it as ‘beyond music’ or ‘WOOOO,’ and everyone else was polite like it was Kabuki or something. And that’s fine! Anyway, the set began with video footage of Haino’s famous percussion performances, which were chopped up according to Yoshimitsu’s drumming, which seemed like a free improv sparring-session with Haino on guitar. This may have been my favorite part of the set, although it was pretty raw when the noise really kicked in. The whole time, the video footage had audio, and a lot of it was footage of Haino performances, so it was like there was a ghost Haino playing rhythm guitar for the ‘real’ Haino. Sugoi. The last part of the set was Haino alternating between his ‘blues songs’ and molesting his guitar neck, and then an encore featuring a surprisingly soulful noise-blues attack that had some kind of decipherable lyrics (ORE WAAAAAA KJHJDHFKDJLSHJKFD INUUUU)… maybe? Someone got some footage of the set up on the internet-

After the show, me and Mitch successfully inserted ourselves into the entourage by virtue of knowing the guys in Zero Reality, and before we knew it we were drinking beer at a really fancy Izakaya (Japanese style bar/restaurant) in a private room, with Haino Keiji. This immediately gets added to my list of real-life scenes from Wayne’s World, and I really wished at that moment that I was with someone that had seen Wayne’s World. I should have asked Haino-san. Mitch was much bolder than me, not being as into the guy’s music, so he was just trying to chit-chat with him (in Japanese by the way) about just stuff, mainly being vegetarian. Haino’s a vegetarian, and apparently doesn’t eat tubers or potatoes or anything that grows underground. That might have been a mistranslation, cause I’m PRETTY sure I saw him eating a potato wedge, but on the other hand I’m not sure if any of what I’m describing actually happened. Anyway, eventually Haino left, and me and Mitch were left with the passed-out members of Zero Reality. I won’t get into all that, but we did have to carry to a dude back to the venue through the back-alleys of Kokura, which is famous for its huge yakuza presence, and that was pretty scary. However, once we got back to Gallery Soap, we were fortunate enough to hang out with the bartender and some other guys for the rest of the night. These guys are the salt of the earth and had great taste in music too; I hipped one dude to Harnetty’s collabadabbadoo with Will Oldham, so maybe Harnetty-san has a venue in Japan if he ever wants one! Anyhoo, here’s a picture of the crew from that night, with me and Mitch awkwardly tossed in there.

the guy in the green shirt is totally rad. the guy that is me is a gaijin

One more thing before I go; I just have to mention that this show started at 7 pm, full-attendance, on the dot. The between-set wait time was never longer than 6 or 7 minutes, despite the fact that the bands, including Haino, set all their stuff up themselves. I haven’t been to many shows in Japan, so I don’t know if that’s just something unique about this venue, but I can only say that that type of punctuality doesn’t even happen at Christian rock concerts in America. So eat it, Jars of Clay.