Blog - Seksu Roba / Groove Room / Shōwa Dance Party
Seksu Roba / Groove Room / Shōwa Dance Party
A bit late, but I have to at least mention my fun musical outings of last weekend.
Seksu Roba at Roppongi Super Deluxe
On Friday night I met up with Tsugumi, and we went to see a show by her label-mates Seksu Roba.
Seksu Roba is formed of Japanese Lun*na (vocals) and Korean-American Sukho Lee (theremin and synths). They play great electronic tunes, and their unique live performance includes eccentric costumes (designed by Lun*na), a mysterious glass ball percussion device (though a look up close quickly unmystified it), a nunchaku demonstration, live theremin, spacey mondo videos (Ultraman and odd space-themed movies, and also a group of "ninjaerobics beginners" wearing black camisoles and a fluorescent headband (gotta see it to believe it)), and a lot of fun.
I like "LA Freeway", which features highway sounds Sukho Lee manages to play on the theremin!
Click thumbnails for larger images. Higher resolution: 1, 2, 3, 4.
I ended up buying Seksu Roba's album "Pleasure Vibrations" and also got a free promo DVD containing some live collage and the video for "Intersexual Overdrive".
We left Super Deluxe around 1:30 and walked down Roppongi-dōri to Shibuya Soft, which is about a 15-20 minute walk. On our way we stopped at Hobson's for delicious ice cream, as it's open until 3am on weekends! It was the first time I had Hobson's and it was really good. You can choose to either have a scoop or to blend two flavors of your choice, process which turns them in some kind of soft ice cream, mmm!
"Groove Room" at Shibuya Soft
So we eventually got to Soft, while Konishi Yasuharu was playing, though I hadn't noticed until he waved at me. :) The other DJs were Arai Toshiya and Hashimoto Tōru (Café Après-Midi). The place was quite packed and people seemed to be dancing a lot more than the previous time I went. Staff even had to move away the tables to make more room for dancers.
There I also met atnb-san, whose diary I have been reading for a while and where I often end up when searching the Web for Readymade-related stuff. As he goes to most Konishi-san events lately, I think I'll be seeing him around!
We left past 4:00 and went to have asa-Mac while waiting for the train.
"Shōwa Dance Party Record yose" at Ebisu Tower Café
On Saturday, after spending the afternoon in Kichijōji, I went to Tower Café in Ebisu together with Hase-san and Yumi-chan of solange et delphine to see the talk event about recently released "Moodsville presents Shōwa Dance Party @ Ikenoue Koan".
The event featured all three selectors: Konishi Yasuharu (Readymade), Hirabayashi Shinichi (Moodsville) and Uchikado Hiroshi (Ballroom), and MC Watanabe Yū. Konishi-san looked a bit serious in a shirt and jacket... or so I first thought.
The talk show focused on many aspects of Shōwa Dance Party, the regular event, and also on the selection process and specific tunes.
It seems like the party doesn't only attract the young clubbing crowd, but also actually golden age-ish people living thereabout who come to dance and bring back old memories. Konishi-san said this was the only such instance he knew of in all of Japan, though he had seen similar somewhere in Europe. He says they need carefully choose tunes with a "heard it before" melody, because while young crowd will dance to anything, that's not the case with the elderly.
As time goes by, the younger audience slowly takes up the dance floor and eventually, Uchikado-san, also known as the 脱ぐDJ (undressing DJ), starts baring it all while playing, which he says is to compensate for his poor DJ skills...
The compilation being released on Victor, they had to limit their choice to only songs from Victor's catalogue, which sounds like quite a bit of a constraint. They talked about wishing they could do the same with Columbia, Toshiba EMI, etc. It would be great if the project could end up involving many labels such as the "Techno Kayō" series released in 1999-2000.
I could also pick up the limited bonus CD (only given to people who attended this event!) which features one extra song by Nakao Mie, whose song "tsukiyo ni Bossa Nova" appears on the compilation.
As we remained sat while chatting a bit, Konishi-san passed by on his way out and greeted us. Along with his jacket and shirt, he was wearing bright green Speedo shorts! sasuga!!
Posted on June 12, 2005 at 02:10 | Tweet
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Showa Dance Party sounds fascinating! I want to check it out.
Posted by Ken M on June 12, 2005 at 10:42