Strung out, tortured, fractured, melancholic blues folk; Nagisa Ni te
is wrangled, off-key, throttled music that is hopelessly endearing. The
male and female vocalist of Nagisa Ni te (means "at the shore") can
neither sing properly nor play their guitars very well (well, actually, he
usually can), but as any one of their tuneless songs have more emotion than
other artists muster in their entire careers this is actually no insult to the
band –
I love them!
I first encountered Nagisa Nite when I discovered that they were on a
free charity concert bill with Aube playing in Ashiya, a town just next to mine
in the Osaka-Kyoto urban sprawl.
Cycling distance away and it was free. I had been into Aube’s strange noise
feedback generation ever since I heard the spooky “G-Radiation” split cassette
(with crap British “anti-art” “improvisational” “nihilist” group Smell and
Quim) some time before, and considered Aube a reclusive Japanese noise genius –
a free Aube gig and only cycling distance from home, what more convincing did I
need? It was actually a
proposition so tempting that even my usually-reluctant wife agreed to go,
making it our first live show together in many years.
Arriving
at the venue we were a bit surprised to find that it was a tea salon, with some
information tables set up taking contact info and distributing charity
pamphlets, and a few people sitting in tea room chairs, the big windows letting
in a lot of light that reflected off the well-waxed hardwood floor. It was more Versailles than CBGB, that
was for sure. We got charity
information brochures, were given a free CD featuring music from the acts that
were going to perform (bonus!) and made a donation. As we took our places, I noticed my friends Bill and Eddie
from RRAHRRR angst thunder duo Coa sitting in the neatly arranged comfy
high-backed chairs and waved to them.
The manager
started off the afternoon of music by saying something about the charity
benefit for the Kobe earthquake. Dressed in a suit and with mad scientist hair,
he spoke in a nasal “Masterpiece Theater” voice and set up a bizarre
atmosphere. Aube came up first and
played some tweaky space music on an old analog sequencer. It made us feel like we were floating
in a vacuum. Next was Naoki Zushi,
who got onstage with his guitar and sang some pretty songs. He was followed by Nagisa Nite, the act
that left us gasping with a sense of having discovered something profound,
surprising, and unusual.
Nagisa Nite is Shibayama Shinji and Takeda Masako. She came onstage, perched on a chair,
adjusted a microphone, put a guitar in place, fiddled with some equipment that
seemed to all be near falling over and delicately balanced prcariously in a
space just a bit too small for it all.
In fact, they had squeezed themselves into only a third of the large
stage. As Masako stumbled about,
Takeda-san seemed to be following her, picking up after the potential mess of
her clumsiness. It was the first
demonstration of his obvious strong love for her, the rest of which comes out
in the songs themselves and the beautiful pictures of Masako that are on all of
the covers of each of their four CDs and on the picture discs inside. But that was all to come later.
In their set they performed a few whimsical songs, none of them
instantly appealing until for their last number they played “the True Sun/ the
True World,” a long and winding strumming song that seemed to go on endlessly. It was also endlessly sweet, like
heavenly nectar, and we didn’t want it to stop. The music was contrasted by the breaks between songs, when
the two stumbled about the stage readying their instruments, among them a
theremin that was hardly used at all.
The couple’s
stage dynamic was also psychologically fascinating – Masako would
strum clumsily on a guitar, the microphone nowhere near her face; Shibayama
would be singing and picking skillfully at his 12-string and singing in his
strong voice, notice that Masako was somewhat amiss, fix her mic and help her
find the right cord while hardly missing a beat himself. Masako seemed to barely know how to
hold her guitar and had a hard time singing in tune. It was hard to decide which of them had the greatest musical
effect. Certainly they contrasted
each other nearly perfectly and played brilliantly off of one another. Whether this was intentional or design
by accident I didn’t know, but I hoped for the latter; what I
did know was that I had a new mission in life – to find out more
about this band and to get all of their CDs.
The band have four CDs released.
The most accessible is their recent “Feel,” the best is the two-CD set
“the True World,” the weakest is the live release “the True Sun,” and the
spottiest is the prototypical first release “On The Love Beach.” At their most experimental the group
seems to be trying to recreate various moments from the Velvet Underground’s
“Heroin,” at their most sentimental they verge on reinterpreting Neil Young’s
mellowest ballads, something that is most evident on their first album with the
song “Me, On The Beach.” Nagisa Ni
te sing only in Japanese, but all of their Blues Interactions-released CDs come
with booklets that print their Japanese lyrics with English translations, a
pretty little essay by Shibayama in English and Japanese, as well as Masako’s
strange sketches of dogs and odd humanoid creatures. The lyrics to the songs are short, imagistic, and tenderly
romantic. The shortest is
“Wonder,” on “the True World,” which consists of only the lyrics “Malo, Kumao,
the dogs.” “Rest” has only four
lines, other songs have six or seven lines in the lyrics. Wow. Shibayama approaches a near-precise way of describing his
band and their releases in his essay where he writes: "From the
beginning our methods were stiff, but although we have gradually found ways to
enjoy ourselves, we seem to remain as clumsy as ever. The four records we
have released as Nagisa Ni te are each in their own ways stiff and imperfect in
form. But our most fervent wish is that perhaps some listeners will hear
in them a feeling similar to that you get when recalling dreams that oddly
stick in the mind, or when seeing the wind raising tiny ripples on the surface
of the water."
The
band’s
latest release is “Feel,” Blues Interactions 2001, balances lyrical duties
between Shibayama and Masako just as it balances pretty ballads and tight pop
structures with strange experimental moods – sometimes all within
the same song! The opening song is
a sweet little thing that is hacked apart by first a sudden, howling, squeaky
guitar solo, and then just as suddenly the organ gives way to peculiar burbling
organ sounds. Two songs are such
strong pop songs that they sound oddly similar, perhaps because they are both
sung energetically by Shibayama-san.
Duets like “Speed of Fish” go on endlessly, with elongated strum-out and
“seaweed guitar” solo by Boredoms guitarist Yamamoto Seiichi and English vocals
by one Tim Barnes. The oddest
songs are sung by Masako, such as the oddly distant voice and guitar tune
“Piho” and the one-guitar-cord-strum “Song For Malo.” It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
“The True World,” Blues Interactions 2000, is a two-CD set dominated by
the opening songs of each CD "the True World" and "the True
Sun" respectively. Essentially versions of the same endless song
(over 25 minutes combined!), this is a recorded version of the 23-minute live
version they offered on the “Orbital Confluence” CD and the piece they often
perform live. Dominated by a simple riff, often repeated and so elemental
that it will never truly leave your brain, the guitar picks up and subsides
like the moodiest Pink Floyd song, and the male and female vocals intertwine
like ivy. Other songs on the CDs are mute, silent pieces that can at
times be barely noticed, at other times fill the room with vibrating off-key
harmonies and sad groovy vibes. Each of the discs has a picture of a dog
on them –
presumable one of them is Malo, the other Kumao.
Released just before “the True World,” but probably impossible to find,
is the “Orbital Confluence” CD (Neurec, 2000) with music by Auge, Nagisa Nite,
and Naoki Zushi. Aube presents his concert of the Yamazaki Salon charity
live concert of 1999, in this case 25 minutes of manipulated samples from the
creaking hall in Chuo-in in Kyoto. This ancient building is installed
with floor-boards that are specifically designed to be creaky as a security
device to reveal intruders. Aube samples it and manipulates it so that it
sounds like crickets, echoes, distortion, heartbeats, bells, approaching
behemoths, insects scurrying, and static. It tells its own musical story
- not very enticing, exciting, or captivating... but interesting. As
usual with Aube, the sounds are layered, complex, and bizarre. Nagisa Ni
te and Naoki Zushi both offer two songs each from a concert in Nanba Bears
recorded with the same three back-up musicians, giving a full sound to their
turgid folk songs. They are beautiful, relaxing, couldn't be slower, and hit
the nail on the head each time. The two Nagisa Nite songs are a classic
version of “the True Sun/The True World,” and may be their best recorded
version of this song suite in a full-flowing 23 minute continuous version. The first Naoki Zushi song sounds
somewhat like a Nagisa Ni te song, while the spare last track is solo, and was
originally recorded in 1981 (and finally mixed in 2000!).
Nagisa Nite’s “The True Sun” (Blues Interactions, 2000)
is a live recording recorded in July 1997 in Tokyo, and as with most live
recordings it will be of interest to fans only. Although the recording is pretty good (you can hear cars
driving by outside the club), the in-between song banter is listless and dull,
not to mention long, needless and barely decipherable (and all in
Japanese). The music is
interesting mostly to hear very different versions of some of their best songs,
i.e. songs recorded stunningly with the band’s male vocalist
Shibayama are now given an experimental treatment with the band’s
female vocalist Masako – notable “”Me, On The Beach” from the first
studio release, “On the Love Beach” and “the True Sun” from “the True
World.” In other words, the first
studio album was mostly his, the second live album is mostly hers. Of the nine songs on the CD, five
appear on other albums, three only appear here, and one appears on the latest
release in a different version and sans a few lyrics. “Morning Glory,” a 7.5 minute song on
“Feel” is given the full twelve-minute treatment here, with an added coda, and
called “Morning Glory – River.” “My Story,” “Gentle Japanese,” and “Mysterium Conjunctions”
are also beautiful songs that don’t appear on other studio albums. A lot of Nagisa Nite’s
live charm lies in the listless, haphazard, lazy, sloppy manner in which they
perform their gorgeous songs (missed notes, broken beats, warts and all), all
of which is represented here, although the effect is a little different –
at a live show it has a strange, gentle charm, whereas on CD it could come off
as crappy and unprofessional.
Nagisa Nite – “On The Love Beach” – Blues
Interactions –
The band’s
first release begins with a bang and one of their best songs, “Me, On The
Beach,” a Neil Young flavored ditty that is soft, hard, wry, instantly
hummable, and full of heart-wrenching agony. Near the end it explodes briefly in feedback confusion,
before lulling out with great acoustic guitar work. The songs on this album are as strong as you must expect
from this incredible band, but are rougher and at times a little wonky in their
experimenting with quirky guitar sounds.
A sixties presence/influence is also very near the surface. Somewhat dominated by Shibayama-san’s
male vocals, Takeda Masako mostly just has backing presence. Her vocals are the somewhat unbalanced,
enchanting force that drives later Nagisa Nite albums and are missed here in
retrospect. It is good that her
role came to grow. Amazingly, the
band’s
self-titled song “Nagisa Nite” doesn’t have any
lyrics. It is followed by the
anthemic “They,” which is also enhanced by Zushi Naoki’s spiraling
guitar. Wow! Altogether a very interesting, eclectic
release, full of great sounds and uncompromising experimentation. Great folk songs, nostalgia, sweet
autumn music. The CD packaging of
this CD, as with all Nagisa Nite releases, is to a point –
on card stock case with a CD in a slip jacket, a booklet of Japanese and
English lyrics, the CDs have nice personal pictures printed on them.
Last
year we received a postcard in the mail announcing the next charity show at the
Yamamura Salon in Ashiya, again with the same bands. The photo on the postcard had been taken the year before,
August 2000, when we saw them first.
This year we told all of our friends about it, urging them to come out,
only now the panicky urgency was not to see Aube as it had been before, but to
see Nagisa Nite! Two friends came
out, amateur musicians both, and they were clearly inspired by Nagisa Nite whom
they had known nothing about previously.
Again the same stage dynamic, with Shibayama-san looking after Masako as
much as he could, she strumming a single cord on the 12-string like she had
just picked up a guitar the day before, singing off key but with incredible
poignancy. Again, it was really something. Went to talk to Nakajima-san, the Aube
mastermind, and bought a CD-R of the previous year’s analog
concert –
bloops and blurps on analogue equipment!
Talked briefly with Masako and asked her to sign my “the True World” CD,
where she drew a little Nagisa Ni te/ Teletubby-like creature. She clearly seemed to be drifting
around in space, somewhere on another world. In the past year I met the guitarist for local techno-rock
wonders Music Start Against Young Assault who said that he once worked part-time
in the same video store as Masako, said that she was always a little odd. Back then she was in a somewhat
goth-influenced band called "Yakeppachi no Maria" that was somewhat
dark and psychadelic. Atsushi’s
other band Jesus Fever later played at the Club Quattro in Osaka with Nagisa Nite
and of course I had to go see them play.
This time I was surprised that they were playing with Masako on
drums! I guess she’s
a drummer too. What a band.