My personal adventure, ventured on a little bit longer after the festival, up till now as I look back in Tokyo, as the impressions received from the festival sparked questions, surprises, and findings of new favorite artists and performance styles.

These impressions and the physical leap from Berlin to Tokyo resulted in this review to include a subjective correlation seen between the acts at CTM and what’s going on right now in Tokyo. Conclusion is, the two cities aren’t so far away, and Tokyo has an adventurous playground too.

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Jan 26th // Opening Concert: Rabih Beaini & Tarawangsawelas, Linn da Quebrada

The Opening Concerts were held at the Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Theater 1. There are three theaters at the HAU, and this one, the HAU1 is architecturally the largest and perhaps the most charming!

Prior to the concerts, the Festival team made a speech and thanked the contributors for the continuance of this annual festival in its 20th year, which started originally at a small Berlin squat. Now spreading quarters to bigger venues like the Festsaal Kreuzberg, Berghain, the HAU Theaters, and the SchwuZ club (a club with a history of over 40 years in supporting the emancipation of diverse people), just to name a few, CTM has been building a steady fan base and I met many people who come outside of Germany, returning to attend the festival in this rather cold and quiet season.

HAU2 impressions // Photo by Writer

Two concerts went on stage this night. First took to stage, Tarawangsawelas & Rabih Beaini (aka Morphosis), who performed a kind of contemporary interpretation of the Sundanese folk trance music called Tarawangsa.

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The violin like two stringed instrument (player on right) itself is called a Tarawangsa, and the seven stringed instrument like a small Koto ( to the left) is called a Jentreng. Minimalistic and repetitive layers of hypnotic music spread throughout the darkened theater house.

After a short break, Linn da Quebrada, a ‘queer rapper’ from Brazil appeared on stage with her band and dancers. Da Quebrada with a microphone instantly enchanted the audience with her fierceness, flaunting queerness and sex, showing charisma that tempt the audience to stand up and dance to the Funki Carioca bass-heavy ghetto grooves. The performance was compelling, the songs heart grasping, and I fell in love instantly.

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Some of the songs performed showed English subtitles on the screen which allowed the non-Portuguese speaking audience to understand her unapologizing provoking lyrics, about anal-sex, cock, sex work and love. Explicit for a political reason, her attitude in performance may be easiest described in these lyrics in ‘Muhler,’ –“She doesn’t wan’t cock, she wants peace … Applaud the transvestites who fight to exist.”

Meanwhile in Tokyo… // Organik Festival Taiwan, the development of Voodoohop collective’s popularity throughout Japan

Tarawangsawelas will play at Organik Festival Taiwan 2019. (So, from the get go this is not in Tokyo, but a lot of audiences and local acts from Japan have been attending this festival, steadily growing in numbers, many realizing that the 3 hour flight is actually affordable and convenient compared to going to other festivals inside Japan!)

I couldn’t think of any acts in Japan that can compare to Linn da Quebrada, but the Voodoohop crew from San Paolo that now have a cult following in Japan might be it. This owes a great deal to Tokyo based dj 7e and her partner that travelled to Brazil, encountered this wonderful art collective, and started inviting them to Japan, introducing them to local artists and organizers, making sensation inspiring Slow House parties to pop up all over Japan.

Voodoohop parties have a liberating atmosphere that celebrate all genders and peoples, which can also be interpreted as political as da Quebrada. There is a direct musical connection as well. The improvisation collective of Voodoohop ‘Roda de Sample’ lead by R Vincenzo counts Linn da Quebrada as a collaborator. Another Voodoohop member Cigarra remixes her track ‘Submissa do 7º dia‘ (you can listen to the track below).

Jan 28th // As If We Were Solitary Selves: Lucy Railton, Thomas Ankersmit

Another night at the HAU, namely the HAU2 theater, also known as the historic ground for the Zodiak Free Arts Lab that existed 50 years ago. Where the Zodiak used to be on the ground floor is now a restaurant/cafe, and upstairs is the theater since those times and now.

Here, Thomas Ankersmit performed a world premier 3D spacial sound piece titled “Perceptual Geography” on the Serge Modular synthesizer, followed by Lucy Railton performing electro acoustic composition “Paradise 94” (Released from Modern Love, 2018.)

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Ankersmit began the performance, first announcing that the sounds may be at times loud and harsh. But he recommend to not use the ear plugs handed out at the entrance, rather to use fingers to adjust how the sounds come into the ears as the piece constructs.

The listening experience of the three dimensional sound piece, “Perceptual Geography” (you can listen to a preview of the recording of this night uploaded on soundcloud,) was quite astonishing and intense. Utilizing high directivity sounds and textures, Ankersmit’s main instrument, the Serge Modular Synthesizer spitted out sounds that nearly felt like solid particles. Even a slight tilt of the head drastically changed the music, so just as the title of the piece indicates, every listener’s experience must have been different. Geography is percept subjectively, and this perception is psychological as well as cultural.

Following, Lucy Railton performed based on her 2018 album “Paradise 94,” with a Cello and electronics. A few days prior Lucy Railton performed at bar KM28, playing a Phill Niblock composition of minimal drone with just a Cello. It was interesting to see her again this time with electronics, and hear how the sound of the classical instrument is transformed into an input source.

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Meanwhile in Tokyo… Super Deluxe closed but you can hear minimal drone at Soup

The last time Thomas Ankersmit came to Japan was in 2013, when he played with Phill Niblock at Super Deluxe. Super Deluxe was the first place the two artists played together another 10 years ago, and the two have been collaborating since.

In early spring of 2019 Super Deluxe closed its doors, and will be dearly missed after its 16 year history in providing one of the few not-so-commercial spaces in Tokyo with a capacity, where room for experimental expression could exist. But not to dread, Tokyo still has hope. Although cozier compared to Super Deluxe, Ochiai Soup‘s reputation for sound quality, diverse experimental acts, is so good that I often hear this from Berliners when they find out that I came from Tokyo. Minimal, drone, noise, improvisation, electro-acoustic concerts (and more!) can be found here.

I visited Soup on a Sunday night to an event recommended by a friend, the night was billed as Opt Gear #4. Here I saw a great improvising noisey-post-jazz act called stand alone-404, by a mad key and electronics player Mitsuhisa Sakaguchi, math rocking drummer Masatsugu Hattori, and on double bass & melody maker Toru Kasai. I found some videos on youtube later, but the experience at Soup was something beyond. Soup’s PA operators have a reputation of bringing the sounds to the next level, and so well Soup is a favored place to record for some musicians. It’s like being in a small studio and monitoring the music with the band, due to the speakers all facing the center of the stage. Intimate and mind blowing experience. Bring your earplugs!!

Jan 30th // As if We Were Heard: 700 Bliss (Moor Mother & DJ Haram), Cocaine Piss, Tim Tetzner, Caliph 8 & Nonplus

“No Photos in our Club please!!” …and,

“Sorry, but not Today.”

You guessed it right, the venue for this night’s concert was Berghain.

I was surprised to see bouncers at the door, since this was a concert held in the evening hours, and it was a part of a festival program. Although I had tickets, the bouncer promptly shook his head to tell me, well, not Today. I showed Mr.Bouncer my pre-sale tickets and soundly got inside, but some people expecting to buy door tickets were turned away. (But you can just buy online tickets and go in.)

With respect to the no photos policy, please bear with embeds of a few instagram posts from artists.

The night began with Tim Tetzner‘s performance, standing with a pc in the middle of the floor making a collage with snippets of distorted guitar and vocals from Punk bands. The audience stood around, some sitting, and listened to the abstract collage. Interestingly, the samples sounded like sounds from the 70’s or 80’s, but Tim confirmed later they are mostly new bands and even some releases from last year, agreeing it’s cool that they sound so.

The Manila duo Caliph8 + Nonplus took to the front stage and constructed a bass heavy polyrhythmic dance music with MPC samplers and other electronics. Abstract -hip hop, -techno, -sound collage and dubby sounds whistled and boomed as the floor started to dance.

I am reminded that there is no front or back or side, acoustic-wise, to a well thought out club floor, when the next act immediately started to play on a lateral stage set-up to the right.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtS35H-l3aM/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

It was 700 Bliss, a project by Moor Mother and DJ Haram. I’d seen Irreversible Entanglements and admired Moor Mother’s poetic musicality in a free jazz context before, but 700 Bliss with DJ Haram producing the Bass induced tracks, is the shit. Appearing in a Gas-mask, Moor Mother raps thought provoking lyrics reflecting the unsettling conditions of the world she sees, with clever wording warns the listener that the status quo of racism, materialism, politics, threat of violence is not at all comfortable. Her words are demanding but not arrogant, is skeptical but does not embrace defeat. At one point Moor Mother came into the audience and her small figure was swallowed into the crowd, as she looked into each and one of the faces to drop lyrics, to speak to each individual literally in-your-face.

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“No no no! We don’t do cocaine, we just chose the most terrible name we could think of,” guitarist Mathias laughed and told me. “People ask us all the time, and some promoters don’t want to book us because of the band name, but most of the time they will understand and happily we’ve been invited to Jazz festivals around Europe as well as punk venues and play for a wide audience.”

I personally find it cool when a band can play big stages to small intimate concerts, and in a variety of context from pop to rock to jazz festivals. This band’s bizarre punk sound is too irresistible for any music lover to miss out on.

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Vocalist Aurélie’s characteristic singing screams fun and punk, as does guitarist Mathias’s cutting riffs and kaleidoscopic solos. Drummer Yannick is a steadfast player but adds lots of playful fills. The band recently acquired a new bassist Farida Amadou who also performs in the free jazz and improvising scene, which might have given the band even more freedom to play around in their punk tradition based song making. The energy of their live performance is bursting but relaxed, and they are a fun group to see live.

Cocaine Piss’ new album “Passionate And Tragic” is coming out in April 2019 with Steve Albini as the recording engineer, which leads us to…

Meanwhile in Tokyo… BODY ODD hosts OOIOO, GEZAN (releases with Steve Albini,) the hatch, Black Smokers

BODY ODD is a fantastic event held irregularly, that does not fixate on a certain genre or form, which is great for the non-confirmative new sounds we’re always looking for, and reminded me of the night of Jan 30th at CTM. BODY ODD’s 7th edition held in March 2019 at Contact Tokyo featured bands and dj acts from Hard-core punk, Hip hop and Experimental, Left field techno and dance.

Scenes in Japan tend to get tighter and tighter within micro genres, band sounds can easily transform into a religious following and fandom, dj parties become a social event, that just becomes too boring too quick. I really don’t know which concerts and dis to go see, and one must pick very carefully since the ticket prices here are so high, so we tend to go see something that we already know and like. Concerts (even experimental jazz and impro) try to end the evening with a climaxing, entertaining cliche of togetherness, all players on stage playing loud, to try to satisfy the audience.

At the night at BODY ODD, an unusual jazzy-punk band from Sapporo called the hatch, which features a vocalist who also uses the trombone in place of the punk traditional shout was an eye-opener for me. After an explosion of aggressive hardcore vibes, the band ended their set with the sweetest mellowest piano centered instrumental song. It was an unexpected conclusion of the set, yet beautiful and showed the band’s musicality.

Another band I found totally mesmerizing was GEZAN. They recorded an album Oct 2018 with acclaimed engineer Steve Albini, as did Cocaine Piss mentioned above. The vocal MahiToThePeople has a capturing character I didn’t get from streaming videos of them.

It’s also impossible to leave out Black Smokers‘ KILLER-BOMB when it comes to mesmerizing vocals. K-BOMB is a rapper, sound and visual artist, free improviser and character. His voice is so unique and his way with words are at times simply just comical sounds, or in contrast deep and full of wit. Even if you do not understand Japanese, his rapping is like listening to jazz vocals and the pure sonic expressions are enough to enjoy his music. He performed last year at Berlin Atonal as KILLER-OMA, a duo with double bassist Suzuki Isao aka Oma-san.

Feb 1st // As If We Were Strong: Setabuhan, Lightning Bolt

On Feb 1st the Polar Vortex was hitting the North American Continent hard, freezing cities and stopping traffic. Berlin was enjoying a pleasant winter day on the other hand. I first heard about this fierce force of nature from the announcement made by CTM, that Venetian Snares will not be playing at tonight’s club night, his plane cancelled due to the Polar Vortex. Oh well, I was heading to the evening concerts when the news came in.

At the Festsaal Keruzberg, Setabuhan, a project led by Indonesian neo-tribal-punk vocalist Rully Shabara known for his duo Senyawa, split stage with New York noise-free-form-rock-duo Lightning Bolt.

Setabuhan, making music with two drums and a voice, took stage first accompanied by a demonstration of martial arts. The martial arts performance added a dramatic story to the tribal trance music. It was a kind of non-contact fighting, a theatric improvised dance of power exchange, life and death, and respect to the ‘other’ who lives and dies among us.

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Lightning Bolt then performed their high-energy hard noise rock, while the crowd turned into a mosh pit. Brian on guitar, and Brian on the drums. I like harsh sounds and energy that this kind of music has, but I don’t appreciate the yes-contact energy exchange in mosh pits. Mosh participants, do elaborate?

Meanwhile in Tokyo…Uchihashi Kazuhisa seen in Japan

Japanese guitarist and Daxophone player Uchihashi Kazuhisa has been performing with Rully Shabara and Senyawa. The Daxophone is a rare instrument that uses resonance and pick ups like an electric guitar, made of wood, invented in the 80s. They released together as MAHANYAWA in 2015.

I was lucky to catch a concert of Uchihashi Kazuhisa now based in Berlin, at the Koen-dori Classics Shibuya Tokyo. This night he played on his guitar. His guitar play is intense and a back straightening listen! Although now based in Berlin he frequently tours and plays in Japan, find his latest concert dates here.

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Feb 2nd // World Premier of Actress + Young Paint AI Sprite

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Actress + Young Paint is a project by Actress aka Darren Cunningham, which was billed as a performance with interaction between the artist and AI Sprite Young Paint, an AI who has been ‘learning’ Actress’s music and production technics.

This act brought about really big questions for me, like, what is an AI? Was Actress really using an AI? What is machine learning, isn’t it an assembly of data and simple statistics? What’s so different about AI made music, compared to algorithm generated music?

These questions lead to an entire topic in itself and for me to look into other musicians who are experimenting in this field…

Meanwhile in Tokyo… Tokyo based Renick Bell of Algorave played with KΣITO

Tokyo based Renick Bell is a member of the Algorave community, and makes music on his self programmed Agent-based software. I’m hardly done with learning about the history of computers and AI, and about the recent hype around AI technology after the breakthrough of deep-learning since around 2012. But Bell gave me some cool insights and tutored me giving me some directions to dig in this topic, and I’m writing an article now.

In Tokyo, he performed with electronic musician KΣITO at Kagurane, at this funky event inviting many acts from the Hong Kong left field electronic label Absurd TRAX. The improvisation between Renick Bell’s agent-based software called ‘Conductive’ and Keito’s knack on the MPCs was pure computer aptness.

Feb 2nd // As If We Knew: Deena Abdelwahed, Fatima Al Qadiri,

At the SchwuZ club, a night focused on ‘femme’ showcased some beautiful talents like Fatima Al Qadiri, Linn da Quebrada, and Deena Abdelwahed.

Something nice about festivals is that it lets the audience visit clubs and venues normally not on their radar. For me, the SchwuZ club was a first, and I was happy to learn about this historical venue which has been playing a role in the LGBT emancipation movement here since 1977. At the entrance, there was a signage on the wall in 10 different languages (!!) , declaring that this club is a ‘Safe Space’ and that everyone is welcome, no harassment is tolerated, and one can always reach out for help. It’s very inspiring to make this much effort to make the message clear.

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The highlight of this night for me was a dj/producer and singer from Tunisia, Deena Abdelwahed. Singing in Arabic, her music felt like a leap from left-field bass and techno tracks that sample Arabic harmonies and beats (like say Shackleton), but adding more of it in heaps and dozes, or, simply the other way around. Sampling avant-garde techno and bass into traditional Arabic music. It was fun to dance to her tricky beats, although the samples from the sound of war ached, her voice rang sweet and soothed, and moved the fully packed crowd in the room under the SchwuZ roof. I found an interview of Abdelwahed by one of my favorite writers, Tom Farber here.

Abdelwahed sang jazz covers in hotels, which led her to discover artists who bridge funk, hip-hop and electronic music, like Flying Lotus and J Dilla. But she found her first musical home in Chicago footwork. Like traditional Arab music, footwork has a focus on fast, precise percussion, and Abdelwahed liked that the genre had its own dance style. 

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2990

The resemblance that Deena found between Juke-footwork and Arabic beats is interesting!! Music will bridge the world, we just have to keep listening. Which leads us to…..

Meanwhile in Tokyo… Deena Abdelwahed will play at Frue Daikanyama Unit

Deena Abdelwahed will perform her first show in Japan, at FRUE, along with Svreca and Wata Igarashi. Not to be missed!!! Frue is an organizer who has been inviting high quality acts from a world perspective, risky yet uncompromising is their production attitude, and their radar and devotion to music is one on the best in Japan.

Yet, it’s really a shame that Abdelwahed will only be doing one gig in Japan, only in Tokyo, and returning to Europe. Japan’s scene could blossom more, and music from the world could travel here more if there was an innovation in a way for organizers to share logistic production costs. I think it’s totally possible by making the costs and profits clear, elaborate everyone?

Some nice videos of the artists mentioned here 🙂