Dekotora(デコトラ) is an abbreviated word which stands for “Decoration trucks” in Japan. Dekotora consists in loudly decorating trucks with extravagant shiny stainless steel parts, colorful paints (who said kitshy?) and flashy lights.
Such trucks can be seen from time to time on the highway but seldom in the city. Actually “dekotora” need to pass an inspection prior to burn the road. I guess it’s better not being involved in a car accident with one of those artsy monsters!
Great sunny afternoon in Fribourg last saturday. The Jardin de Lucien was a very nice place; great view, a big tree giving some shadow and cool people. The line-up was pretty eclectic, from acid techno to french song. I can’t say I performed well; my computer crashed after 10 minutes and I had to reboot my setup. It got quite crowdy in the evening and two policemen came shortly after midnight to stop the party… it was supposed to end at 11:30 pm. I hope nothing bad happens to the organizers who really did a great job and contribute in making Fribourg an interesting spot.
This is the nice flyer made for the event that takes place tomorrow in Fribourg and that I’m part of. Click here for the full programme.
I’m not having much time for preparing my set and I can’t actually re-use what I did at oblo last saturday. It was quite experimental and wouldn’t work well in such an “open-air” event with no sound check. As usual, I’m planning three parts. I bought a small glockenspiel few days ago that I’m gonna use for the first part. It might sound a bit like Jodi Cave. Second part will be feedbacks mixing, something I already did at oblo. For the last part I sampled some short sequences of a Yakuza movie and bits of contemporary classical music both from the 60’s that I’m gonna mix with distorted abstract hip-hop beats. One night left to complete that setup…
Marc of adozen.org kindly invited me to play at an event he’s organizing in Fribourg for the “Fête de la musique”. It takes place at Le Jardin de Lucien on saturday from noon to midnight. There’ll be a dozen of live and dj sets. I’m supposed to play at 7:30 pm. I hope the sun shines.
When it comes to remixing a song from a big group like Radiohead, there are tons of guys producing ugly 4/4 club remixes and a few who create something truly original. James Houston, who’s just graduated from the Glasgow School of Art, definitely belongs to the second category.
“Based on the lyric (and alternate title) ‘Big Ideas: Don’t get any’ I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.”
I played yesterday at oblo. Below are some pictures and a video.
Very few people came but from what I heard they enjoyed the show. Unfortunately I couldn’t do visuals as there was no plug that fit my video output.
As usual I can’t say much about my set. I had definitely too much reverb and my guitar’s microphones which I had tuned to be extremely sensitive didn’t behave as expected (because of air moisture?). No pre-recorded stuff, every single sound was done live… I think it was not too bad actually.
Dave Phillips did a great mix of recordings he did while travelling in Thailand and Vietnam. Insects, water, storm… At the end he distributed this text to the audience. Interesting.
Some time after the show, Dave put some insane music like a fantastic “Eye of the tiger” sung by a crazy pakistani guy and some pop tunes from Thailand… That was pretty cool.
Thanks to Phroq who organized the event. By the way he’s gonna play at oblo on July 5th with Michael Gendreau. I’ll be there!
“These photographs came about after a friend emailed me an image taken on a cellphone through a car window in Lagos, Nigeria, which depicted a group of men walking down the street with a hyena in chains. A few days later I saw the image reproduced in a South African newspaper with the caption ‘The Streets of Lagos’. Nigerian newspapers reported that these men were bank robbers, bodyguards, drug dealers, debt collectors. Myths surrounded them. The image captivated me.”
I’ll be playing at oblo in Lausanne on saturday. The main act will be Dave Phillips presenting his field recordings work. I’m glad to do a support act for him but I know he’s gonna tell me if I’m bad at it!
So I’m now preparing my setup… I bought a microphone a few weeks ago so I’m planning to do a lot of live sampling. I’ll bring some noisy objects and try to find some more there, that’d make interesting sound. I’m also planning to interact with the electromagnetic field produced by guitar’s microphones. The issue is that it’s so unstable that it behaves in a different way everytime I relaunch the setup. The last part is still open. I thought I’d make something with a contact mic and feedbacks. But again it’s quite unstable and there’s no way to reproduce twice the same sounds. I need rehearsals… few days left.
Oblo is a great place for listening to experimental music (quiet people, good sound system) and watching visuals (did I forget to say it’s a cinema?). So I also planned to add visuals to my music. I slightly improved the Processing patch I used one year ago for another concert. It’s a generative process that makes abstract drawings reacting to the sound.
If you like experimental music and don’t care about Eurofoot (Greece vs Russia on this day), you might want to come to oblo on saturday. I don’t know anyone yet who listens to experimental music and wouldn’t miss a football match.
La série Hong Kong: Architecture of Density, dans sa géométrie démesurée, est fantastique. Ce qui frappe dans cette série c’est l’absence humaine, comme noyée dans ces monstres de surdensité, et les motifs géométriques qui se révélent grâce à la distance et forment des oeuvres abstraites surprenantes.
Je tends à penser que si j’avais été dans le même lieu j’aurais pris les mêmes clichés, la maîtrise technique en moins. D’ailleurs l’idée d’une autre série, Hong Kong: Corner Houses, également remarquable, est proche de ce que j’ai tenté de faire avec ma petite série Street Corners, à une échelle plus modeste.
Photo de Michael Wolf à Hong Kong.
Une photo que j’ai prise à Osaka.
Loin de moi l’idée que j’aurais été capable de produire le même travail, mais le regard que je porte sur les choses, et notamment l’univers urbain, me semble proche du sien. J’ai l’impression de voir ce que j’aurais “vu”, et ça procure une certaine émotion.
