shobus diary

shot in kinchijoji and asakusa. i really wish you could zoom into these pics the way i did just a few minutes ago and let your mind wander along the same path i followed, i met some lovely people down there

we found in the trash a whole box full of the character called "afro ken" ... here are some of it :

yesterday was really the most un-touristic day since we arrived.
just hanging out in the ghetto as dj bobofete would have said.
i don't know if this is a crescendo, but i really enjoyed this day more than the others. except for that very good evening with robert (easy talk and good alcohol match my expectations). hi robert. i'm honored.

this yahiro place has a lot in common with where i was living two years ago. getting back into the advantages of living next to a dump
(having free stuff, sometimes even cool free stuff such as pregnant women's asses
or
ex-kawaii dogs).

it felt like sticky christmas when we found them. problem is it kind of stinks.
also getting back to using minidisc for field-recording takes me back to ici-même techniques except i don't really know why i'm recording stuff now.

from now on
(we are just coming back from fish market, davide and laurence are sleeping. she's on the upper bed, third floor)
today may be like yesterday as we are going to stay here and work on the lecture.
fish market was great. we got some smiles and interest from the busy fishermen, and some typical shouts from the policemen. i was asked if i had an access card to be where i was (on my left, dead tunas, on my right, more dead tunas, in front some guy auctioning them with a bell with a good flow that davide sampledandloopedandpitched up-scale of course in the most perfect and meaningful way at the end of the 20-minute performance , behind me those cars that i had never seen before , and on my belly the portable PA and laptop cranked-up to the max (11). i need a card?)

because our very first outdoors session with the portable PA's this morning in Tsukiji was such an exhilarating experience, i'm afraid to stumble over yesterday and ignore what happened. here is a short list:

davide cut stephane's and lozi's hair, we tested the PA's on the roof of our beloved factory, went to kinshicho to buy some batteries for the PA's, then headed to kichijoji to see daisuke's concert (leif elggren and tetsuo furudate were also playing, or so i heard) but we couldn't make it in time, so we waited for him outside the venue then took a charming walk among drunken teenagers in inogachira park. that's what we call a battery refill day among the shoboys. oh yeah, mehdi and stephane seem really hooked on a strange joke involving very cool voice impersonations (french ghetto style) but very bad social issues. i really hope they move on to more dada levels in the forthcoming weeks. and pics are coming.

to G.M - ever heard of Motards en Colère?
to Catjams - thanks for the advice. we'll definitely be very careful with the laptops on the speakers. but it's so cool walking around with them and play mayhem shit with field sounds, we won't be able to behave ourselves. let us all prey for the good health of our laptop buddies.

robert noticed this on masagoro's website

dj bobofete also mentions us on his so bobo so chic journal

how cool are we?

one station for free.
keisei line.

...

Testing Portable System (Seats).

on the roof of Yahiro Factory, we stopped because some worker of the mini austin dealer just next shouted at us and said that he couldn't stand the sound anymore ... We had been playing for 2 hours, I must confess. The Max patch that Nao Tokui developped for us is sooooo good!
Tonight after Daisuke Ishida's concert, we will do a quiet Portable PA (PPA) session by the river with fireworks, photos will follow tomorrow.

the place where we stay, an old factory ... Cat's name is "Biquet".

pics taken from ueno to shinjuku, some roof where we will play soon ...

Sooo... Yesterday was a tiresome and exhilerating day, we walked all over several areas to look for Portable PA performances spots, recorded some sounds, took a lot of pics, then we met Robert Duckworth and had a drink and a chat with him in a restaurant in the korean area, and talked about the quite problematic part of the project, which is in its "disturbing" or "abusing" potential aspect. Then just before going back home we met, at the entrance of the station, Masa Goro, a musician who plays toy piano and sells her records on the street (something like 30 pieces, all original compositions, more than 300 of them ...). When I saw her playing and everybody rushing and passing in front of her without paying any attention to her music, i felt a bit strange and started to think that we will find ourselves in the same situation very soon,
thought it was quite sad ... Then Robert said that we might go and listen to what she was doing and then we talked with her and it was very interesting (her music reminded me of Jon Inu's music) and then i began to think that what we will do by playing music and playing with sounds in the city outside of official venues will probably be more about interaction than creating something just for ourselves, at least these interactions is really what i'm looking forward to experience now.

tests results are positive : we will have fun making music.

triggers are great

i don't even need to use any FX (besides some equalisation)

so, thank you nao, shoboshobo patch rules!

this "blind folder" thing i bought is really good too : 7 hours straight sleep on my tatami!

and we have a washing machine too!

so many things, actually

first, about that chalk-white corean beverage we were introduced to yesterday by mister duckworth - it's called "maccori" and not "moccori" and robert had indeed good reasons to be afraid of the confusion between the two, as he wasn't so sure about which one was which, between the beverage and having "your pants are too tight over your "mashroom"

before that, i remember:

a great walk from asakusa to ueno under a hammering sun, a nice crash by the lotus-field/lake in ueno with some crazy insects doing some crazy sounds in the background, an actual thong-with-a-hood and an amazing songwriter playing toy-piano and singing like a genuinely demented joana by the metro in shinjuku, some girl i talked to on some drunken guy's cellphone who wanted to show me how well she could speak english and who asked me if i was drunk as well (i wasn't, really)

and, most of all, a real issue (which was first raised and wildly discussed yesterday evening in shinjuku by me, robert, davide, stephane and mehdi):

as we were seeking for some nice buildings with nice roofs that we could get on to play some music, yesterday morning in asakusa, some guy saw me from the street and asked me to come down. i don't know if it was about privacy, or about something else. i don't even know if he was an inhabitant of the building, or just some old cranky asshole who couldn't stand the view of four gaijin guys with beards and stupid smiles on their faces in a japanese household. i could only babble a few words about visiting a friend (and used the word "todomachi" instead of "tomodachi") and feel like a very guilty kid who just performed some meaningless minor transgression.

but one fact remains: he had every right to ask us to get the hell out of that private place, and the fact that a meaningful part of our project is about playing music and sound in public and private spaces, where we are not invited to play music and sound, is quite a problematic issue precisely because we are doing it in japan.

why?

because we actually CAN do it.

why are we going up on private households' roofs to try and perform experimental music with the environmental sonic activities? because we CAN, in this here country.

this is not only about playing with the local law regulations about noise disturbance, which are really more permissive than anywhere else in the world. this is not really about criticizing, or underlining the singularities of the japanese urban sonic environment. this is not about testing the limits of japanese courtoisie and gentleness either. this is about playing music and, maybe, making art in unexpected contexts, and try to do that in an immersive way. but the mere fact of playing music in the street, the way we're going to do it, BECAUSE we CAN, still makes me uncomfortable. it is not, it never was, it will never be our intention to abuse japanese culture. but the fact is that, in many ways, we are.

davide raised a very interesting question in the end. in japan, intentional noise assaults in urban environment are 99% of the time driven by economical reasons (the remaing 1% being political, i think), as they are the results of aggresive advertisement. and what makes us really transgressive, for the most part, is not our possible abuse of japanese culture and tolerance: it is the totally altruistic and fortuitous nature of our interventions. anyway, we haven't even tried to play in real outdoors conditions yet. i'll keep you updated about this issue as it feeds on actual experience, in context. we still may get beaten up by pissed-off yakusa pachinko owners, or by some old cranky nannies. robert told me that i'll probably feel more guilty and miserable if no one never complains about our doings, than if someone does.

oh, and we'll be posting pics later today.

TODAY :

WEATHER :
Cool day. Quiet dry.
It's good to feel the water coming from the air conditioning when it's mixed with fresh wind and spread with a micro particule speed.

ACTIVITY :
Portable PA Spot hunting.
Asakusa; Ueno; Different buildings roofs (some were closed but... ); Shibuya; etc.
main touristic areas for first performances.



Video Traces : Taking pictures and sound recording
maybe too many pictures but now i try to avoid my shooting on everything but want to remember and keep a good and clear memory. Hummm... Hard to stop my finger and its gravity on the button.
Hard to say but moments are fast and fugitive. Can my camera do anything ?


Late memories and moccori (?) the white alcohol :
Will we really be abusing if we go just further the japanese law ? I mean with the ART process excuse ?

one MD recorder
one towel
one what's-the-name-of-it thing you put on your eyes to keep the light from waking you up (maybe the most convenient thing in the world, after all)
one pomeranian (it's a dog, apparently) sticker
one melodica (which is called a pianica on this side of the world)

drank this chalky-white alcohol with robert, talking about a possible better world with the combination of jar-jar bings and franz fanon as leader.


enjoying this a lot.

davide se réveille, à peine, tiens nous sommes à la yahiro factory il fait toujours chaud il fait toujours beau hier soir je me suis couché

avec un mal de tête qui s'appelait gonz il était toujours là ce matin il commence à partir je me rappelle de

hier une sieste dans cet endroit mystérieux monozukuri school comme il y en a tant ici endroit artistique indeterminé avec un café au bout du couloir, et une galerie avec des installations vidéos dernier CRI en face, la fille de l'accueil qui n'arrêtait pas de remuer son café avec une cuillère en fonte mais en fait non c'était un petit mobile qui gigotait avec le vent, il y avait un vent doux, j'ai rêvé un peu à cette boite à musique électronique qu'on pouvait voir dans ce gros catalogue mystérieux

le trajet de chez daisuke à setagaya, avec les gros camions chromés tout neuf (lozi dit que depuis que le diesel est interdit à tokyo tous les camions sont neufs tous les camions sont chromés dernier CRI)

le vendeur à ochanomizu qui m'a vendu cette jolie pignose toute noire mais nettement moins puissante parce que le hp est tout petit que celle de stéphane et qui m'a parlé de zidane en me regardant d'un air incertain

davide qui tourne autour des femmes-sandwiches d'akihabara comme si de rien

hier soir qu'on a vécu comme cette première soirée à fukuoka il y a quoi bien longtemps (derrière stéphane et davide jouent leur hymne russe en version molle moche désaccordée) mais avec un peu moins de passion, ito et les autres pas moins adorables pourtant, on a si bien mangé, on leur a promis un repas français avant de partir mais on ne sait rien faire, on va leur faire un quiche lorraine, à un moment je suis sorti prendre l'air sur la terrasse jonchée de planches dangereuses de trous dangereux d'épaves de machines à télevision quand je suis rentré j'ai entendu "olamm is a black metal otaku" et j'ai sorti un cd de deathspell omega comme un reflexe mais j'avais déjà mal à la tête, impatient de me coucher sur l'échafaudage qui nous sert de lit, il y a quelques minutes noriko et chloé sont arrivées, en tenue de soirée, comme si de rien n'était,

comme à chaque fois, tout ici est comme si de rien

pourtant, je suis toujours heureux-baveux d'être ici on va partir errer un peu dans asakusa, tout prêt, très bientôt plus bientôt

so, the facts :
Yesturday we left Ishida Daisuke's lovely familly house and got to "Settagaya monozukuri school IID" for an appointment with the staff. This is the place where we are going to give the opening lecture for the tour and also an Active Suspension / Shoboshobo concert with O.lamm, Domotic, Davide Balula and Minifer.
After that we went to Ochanomizu area to buy some music instruments (a mini-guitar for olivier, a pianica for stephane...) and to akihabara to get some useful stuff like dv tape, md tape ...
Finaly we went to Yahiro Factory "Highti", it's an old factory where we will be living all the time we are in Tokyo. The place is very nice and its very friendly residents (including a nice young little cat named "Biquet") welcomed us by a delicious japanese dinner (oden, sashimi ...).
Today is Portable PA live spot hunt...

they wear blue outfits and white helmets and they dance every morning to the sound of a yamaha piano.

Hier :
6 heures de décalge horaires, 6h dans le futur.
En bref nous avons vieilli de 6 heures. (A charge de revanche, nous recupérerons ces heures à notre retour)

aujourd'hui :
Réveil : 5h00 du matin (apres nuit (? hum ) blanche)
Jetlag residus
les yeux brûlent et l'air est terriblement mou !
Hier déja très lourd et pas seulement par terre.
On peux presque nager en marchant. (Malheureusement pas encore entièrement)

Le typhoon est passé cette nuit. On raconte qu'il ne reviendra pas à tokyo d'ici un petit moment.

a first class chopstick holder

so yesterday we flew all the way from paris to zurich then zurich to tokyo, leaving paris at 10 local time and arriving in Tokyo at 7.15 local time. we met noriko and chloé on the plane, which was weird, then sawako at narita, which was even weirder, because i hadn't seen her in three years. she was heading back to new york, where she's living now, and i really wasn't sure it was her until she shouted "olamm" and smiled. oh well. we then took the express to shinjuku, where me met might might daisuke, who's been taking care of us ever since (we're just waking up now in his living room), walking us and our luggages through soaking shinjuku, waiting for lozi and a typhoon. lozi arrived a few hours later, at daisuke's family's house. oh, and yoyo, who lives just nearby, also came to say hi later on, but when she arrived we hadn't slept in thirty hours. it's so good to be here.

sont au fond du bureau à gauche.
allways make sure you know where the stop button is.
yesterday evening, we had a great curry made by daisuke's oka-san and a salad with delicious smoked cheese which reminds me even more of ici-même and grenoble.
waiting for the moskitos to attack.
davide has great hair. i have bad hair.
maybe i shoul buy a pillow.

j'ai un petit bouton dans le dos.

yesterday was a zombie day, we didn't sleep in the plane and spent the whole day of our arrival with Ishida Daisuke who took care of us. At night, Lozi joined us in Daisuke's parents nice and typical japanese family house where we slept. Lozi brang the portable PAs he made for us, they are just great.