The Comet Is Coming at WWW, December 1st 2022

 


I’m not exactly an expert on rave culture, but whenever I hear about it I associate it with England. I might be wrong, but I think rave culture was deeply rooted in the UK, especially in the nineties. It makes sense that a reinterpretation of the jazz trio will be inspired by that climatic period of time that anticipates the beat drop in Electronic Dance Music. 

The Comet Is Coming not only take musical cues from EDM. Their live shows, as I witnessed in their first headlining performance in Japan, are built around this cathartic aspect found in the climax build up and the eventual drop release. It’s definitely exhilarating and infectious. It’s rare to see a Japanese audience actively participating and expressing joy in the way I saw at WWW that night.

The show started with a tasty intro that was more in the Pharoah Sanders vein, with Shabaka Hutchings delivering in the tenor sax a taste of the righteous licks we'll be witnessing throughout the night, with Danalogue on keys providing the thick atmospheric base colored with Betamax’s cymbals flourish on drums. The proper opener came up next with the first two songs from their latest album Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam, the one-two punch of Code and Technicolour. The high energy levels were set from the get go and solidified with their best known tune. Early in the set we got an intoxicating rendition of Summon the Fire.

The exquisite fusion of jazz improvisations with EDM also explored unusual different venues that enhanced and made this offering even more special. I could swear that I heard along the dub influenced sounds, the airy groove of Haitian kompa / zouk enriching those extended numbers and the trio's jaw-dropping musicianship .

I stood in front of Danalogue for the whole show and it was a trip to see up close how focused and intense the man was. Analogue synthesizers sure look like fun. Hutchings and Betamax are obviously amazing musicians as well. It was my first time seeing one of Hutchings projects and can’t wait for the chance to catch another one. This two hour show was definitely an awesome one to close the year with.

Thank you for reading. Please follow me on Twitter for updates at @ConcertTokyo. You can also click the Like button and get notifications at The Tokyo Concert Experience on Facebook.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fishbone at The Garden Hall, August 19th 2022

Image
  Less than a year before the pandemic started I saw Angelo Moore walking in Shibuya. I checked, it was May 2019, the last time Fishbone came to Japan. I was on my way to work and saw him in front of Don Quijote. He was wearing a red fez hat just like you will see him wear in a video. I thought about approaching him, asking for a picture, but I was too shy. Not only was I not going to their show that evening, the truth is that I was not at all familiar with his band's output. In the nineties MTV Latin America had their collaboration with Los Fabulosos Cadillacs on heavy rotation. That was the extent of my knowledge of that band’s music. For some reason I wrote them off due to what I felt was an overwhelming hyper expressive frontman. Was I wrong; probably not about the hyper expressive frontman, but about writing them off as a novelty act. I corrected this wrong during the lockdown. First with the self-titled EP and then with the documentary Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbon
Read more

Mr. Bungle at Toyosu Pit, February 28th 2024

Image
  I think I already mentioned that I used to host a couple of radio shows more than twenty years ago when I lived in Los Angeles. They were on KXLU, a station that broadcasts from the campus of Loyola Marymount University, my alma mater. One of them was a jazz show that went on the air on a weekday, I think Wednesday or Thursday. My co-host Joseph came up with the title ’The Gift of Jazz”. It followed an instrumental show that was hosted by DJ Ned. Ned’s show was one of my favorites, he introduced me to a ton of music. Two releases in particular, that he personally recommended while music played between the end of his slot and the beginning of mine, ended up being among my favorite albums of all time. One was the Ethiopiques 4 compilation with music from Mulatu Astatke -we’re talking years before the movie Broken Flower exposed these songs to the world. The other was a new release at the time, the album The Director’s Cut by Fantomas. That album, a four-piece rock band reinterpretat
Read more

Colin Currie Group plays Steve Reich at Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, April 21st 2023

Image
  Music for 18 Musicians is quite possibly the most accessible avant-garde piece of music ever. That doesn’t diminish its impact nor its complexity. It’s not accessible because it’s simple, it’s accessible because it connects with the listener on a primal level. The comings and goings of the bass clarinets and voices are like breathing, while the rhythmical throbs of the marimbas feel like the pacing of movement. This Pulses , as each of the sections are called, paint a complete and fascinating picture of human movement. It never ceases to engage through its one hour length. The ECM premiere recording, with the participation of the composer Steve Reich himself among the 18 musicians, is a classic. It’s perfect for relaxing, studying, as background music or for deep listening. I’ve been a fan of that recording for many years but I’ve only seen it performed live once. It was as a contemporary dance production. Rain , choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at Palais Garnier in Pari
Read more