Monday 12 March 2007

Sabot, emulsion, Muddy World, mania organ, Uhnellys at Motion

by craig

To tell you the truth, I wasn't really familiar with any of the bands at this show so I wasn't really planning to go. But seeing as one of the band members was nice enough to put me on the guestlist, and being only a short walk from work, I wandered down to Motion after clocking out.
Motion, on the fifth floor of a building in Kabukicho, is one of Tokyo's many tiny, tucked-away livehouses. Not long after I arrived, Uhnellys took the stage. A guy on bass with amazing control of his loop pedals was sampling his cool basslines and rhymes while a girl on drums kept everyone's heads nodding. The guy sometimes changed to guitar and miniature trumpet. They were kind of noisy groovy hip-hop. Definitely a band I'd like to see again.
The next band, Mania Organ, were another bass and drums two-piece. They basically entered the stage, turned the distortion pedals on full so there was constant feedback screeching, played as fast as they possibly could while screaming into the mic non-stop for their short set, then disappeared from the stage. I couldn't follow the songs. Maybe I'm getting old..
Muddy World were the only band of the night with the usual rock line-up of bass, drums and guitar and played mostly instrumental post-rock-shoegaze-jazz. They allowed us to chill-out a bit after Mania Organ's attack. I've been finding myself rediscovering post-rock again lately so I really enjoyed this trio. They are going to SXSW this year.
Next was emulsion who organised this gig. Keyboard, guitar, bass and drum machine. Some of the drum sounds sounded like actual pre-recorded drums. The best songs were the ones with dancable electro beats. The band was mostly intrumental, sometimes very post/math-rock, sometimes post-hardcore with screaming, sometimes even rather ambient.
SABOT consists of two Americans who live in the Czech republic. They've been playing the same kind of music since 1988. They cross between punk, progressive rock, jazz, groove and super-techical math-rock without really being easily defined into any genre. Pretty impressive for an instrumental bass and drum duo. They had a good rapport with the audience, looking at people and smiling throughout the performance and stopping to talk. They would have been amazing 15 years ago.
After the show I stopped for a curry that burned the top of my mouth and really didn't please my stomach..

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