\\Hoooo boy, I. Am. Wiped.

8am Japan time. Been up for 24 hours, but worth it. Just got back from Raster-Noton show in Kyoto…. Metro is a great little club, and haven’t been to Kyoto for a while. Lovely city.

 In short: AGF= interesting textures and snippets of speech, but a little too self-consciously performance-arty and poetic. Still pleasant to experience bodily on a huge soundsystem.  Conversely, French language/sound poet Anne-James Chaton’s set was intense: reading strings of data from world events in monotone baritone in time with concussive clusters of sampled voice. His latest album, Evenements 09 is shortlisted for the “Best of 2011” list….  Vladislav Delay= a little disappointing. Always great for home listening (Huone is a perennial fave), but his ambient textural drift seemed unfocussed. While not a fan of his recorded output beyond his collabo with Noriko Tujiko, in the live setting, Aoki Takamasa was delightfully funky. Alva Noto delivered by doing Alva Noto- my first time seeing him and it was absolutely compelling.  Good rock’nroll.  And Byetone crushed it. Surprised? Not at all.  Fan? Me? Not at all.

The highlight of the night was also the most surprising, where as a finale before the DJ’s started (at 5am!) Noto and Byetone broke from their press-kit roles as serious, cerebral and austere artists and in lieu of an encore, threw down an impromptu DJ set, messily weaving grime, dubstep, straight-up house, that Michael Jackson/Residents mashup, into James Brown and into 80s territory with Madonna, Joy Division and Visage.  It was a full-on drunken dance party with the pair chainsmoking, doing shots and clowning on stage with the crowd responding in kind. There’s video of that to come, and it was the most fun I’ve had in a long while. 

Best show of the year.