by natsume on Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:08 am
Meguro Persimmon Hall is a very beautiful, new, mid-size facility, and one thing about the show that was just awesome: perfect sound.
It was Steve, Cornelius, Takagi, and a string quartet. Essentially, after a very slow lead in, pulsing electronic strings that were eventually joined by the quartet, the full band broke into Grip, and they played the entire album, start to finish. All of the vocals were the recorded versions, although they may have been different takes, in some cases. Sylvian's Playground Martyrs sounded like it might have been. The lack of vocalists was addressed, in I think a very satisfactory way, by videos of each singer projected, with the rest of the evening's visuals, on a giant screen behind the band. After the album, the band briefly left the stage, and they came back to do Swimming in Qualia, about a 25 minute version. Steve introduced the musicians, I think right before Ballad of a Deadman. And he also indroduced Swimming, saying something about it being far darker than the first part of the show, and hoping we liked it.
It was very professional, as one would expect. The guitar, keys, and strings fleshed out, made "live", the essentially digitized skeletal structure of the music. I have some reservations about this, the same I had for the use of the prerecorded music on the World is Everything tour, and there as well it seemed to mostly be used with Steve's Nine Horses stuff. I guess, given the talent, I would probably be happier with skeletal versions of the songs using just the musicians that are there. Given that, I was most happy with this show when Steve was focused on percussion, his hybrid kit of pads and cymbals, and the music openned up and felt more like a live band. December Train and Deadman were both the standouts for me, for these reasons.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the show, it was a treat, and really made the new work come across very strong. Steve was lovely, and his usual modest and quiet self.
The crowd was almost entirely Japanese. I think I saw Masami Tsuchiya. If it was him, he was wearing a dress. Missed Sylvie, although we tried to hook up.