Toshimaru

Tonight was the big night, a concert in LA and the artist was Toshimaru Nakamura along with Lewis Keller and Carole Kim. Toshimaru performs on a no input mixer, which means he cycles the output back into the input. He is quite fabulous and I highly recommend taking a listen , yeah for this! it's some of the greatest most inspirational and elegant sounds (if a bit overbearing at times) I have heard in a long time. It can be loud in concert, but it never surpassed what I have experienced with a concert orchestra.

Now.... The story. This is a 1 hour and 48 minute drive, to Disney Hall and it took 2 hours, because there was traffic. So we were right on time. I mean we arrived at 8:33 and the concert started at 8:30 (I hate myself). We even had a shirtless, homeless freaking out dude sighting on the way into the concert, so it felt very official. My compadre Nick and myself sit down behind a crowd of very cultured people, so cultured that the have the perfume to prove it. Needless to say they fidgeted and commented to each other before leaving in the middle of the second piece. Apparently they payed $18 dollars x4 for something they had no idea about and couldn't take it for what it was, it had to fit their notion of what it should be. Oh and they didn't have the decency to leave between pieces while other people were clapping. Fine, several people left. But then even better. The first set ends and people are applauding and from the back left corner we hear shouting, it turns out there are 2 people shouting, "You people are fucking idiots, this is a bunch of shit. You fucking idiots." Well, that was amazing. I have never been to a concert that elicited such an authentically human reaction. Mind you, this was a concert that they paid to see and they were upset that other people were enjoying it. Wow. Then I look over at this ruckus and who had slipped in late after parking the car only to sit in front of these possible psychopaths? Of course it was my wife. She informed Nick and I that she was rather concerned for her life during the minute of ranting or so.

The music? As I said Toshimaru is spectacular. While I liked some of the sounds and textures that Lewis Keller was able to create, there was a distinct aesthetic difference and I disliked that his control mechanism was so typical and predictable, even if the sounds always weren't. In general they worked well together. The video work by Carole Kim was great, there was never a moment that I felt I was not able to understand how these images were being created or imported and manipulated and combined, yet it always felt fresh and amazing. It played with issues of viscosity and balance of layered images combined with lighting and tasteful manipulation.