The Tokyo Concert Experience

It’s an incredible experience to go to Fuji Rock Festival . Those three days of long walks in the midst of nature, in an environment that makes a conscious effort of respecting that privileged location and treats it with care. Enjoying an eclectic lineup with multiple options, depending on one’s taste. With a food offer that amazingly improves with each year. For all these reasons and more Fuji Rock is definitely an event to look forward to. The first day this year was unlike my previous two experiences. Those Fridays were the least attended days in each of those editions. That doesn’t mean scarcely attended, it means that there’s still the possibility of moving around with relative ease. But this was the year that Ellegarden played Fuji Rock. After an 11 year wait since their last appearance at the festival, the fans eager for their pop-punk fix came in droves. I’d say that at least two out of ten people walking around the site were wearing an Ellegarden t-shirt. The lines at th...

At first glance the eclecticism of this concert’s program was more than apparent. Starting off with a Viennese Strauss waltz followed by an ominous 20th Century masterpiece. Then followed after an intermission by another masterpiece from the pre-baroque era and closing things up with a another repertoire staple, this one being a tone poem from the late 19th Century. I don’t think this concert was advertised as such, but it was not difficult to see how this juxtaposition of styles worked as a parallel soundtrack to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey . The contrast between Johann Strauss II and György Ligeti in the first half of the program was similar to that between the images of futuristic state of the art technology and Strauss’ Blue Danube in the movie. A ship landing on a space station as the aforementioned waltz climaxes at its finale is not a jarring juxtaposition, it works because both elements remind us of the inherit beauty of a well-oiled machine. For this concert we ha...

In the era of streaming and while everyone anticipates the disappearance of the movie theater, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a filmmaker that continues to be fascinated with the notion of film as a collective experience. What this idea embodies is the overall concept of Fever Room , an installation that has toured countries in Europe and Asia wowing audiences in its path. If you have a chance to experience it please don’t hesitate, it’s a truly unique experience. If that’s the case I’d ask you to stop reading, because in this post there will be information that could potentially spoil the experience. After being guided through a somewhat dark maze along with rest of the audience, we found our spots near the front, sitting on cushions on the floor. Just a few minutes later the place went to pitch black darkness and a screen descended from the ceiling. The projection started with a series of images shown twice described each time by an unseen character using a single word for each ...