Japan Tour 2010: The Minus Festival

Osaka is a lively, noisy city, with pedestrian-filled one way streets and fearless cyclists. This was a fitting setting for our most energetic gig yet; the Minus Festival at Club Vijon on Sunday 25th July. Hosted by the brilliant Boneville Occident, the festival was composed of post-rock, ambient and electronica-based acts, and given such a focused lineup there was a great camaraderie between the bands.

We arrived at 12:30 for a seamless soundcheck thanks to an incredibly helpful legion of Club Vijon techies, who managed to rustle up a full drum mix for Dave and took meticulous notes in preparation for our set, which was the last of the night. The event started at 3pm with Pastel Blue, a young shoegaze band who did well to start things off. However, things really kicked off with a storming set by Anyo, probably the most straight-up rock band of the event, with gorgeous female vocals and fierce guitar lines.

Anyo rocking out

After this, Kanina gave the audience the chance to drift off into a dreamlike world, with a live version of their 'a short story', a narrative about a little boy who searches for his purpose in life. With childlike, crayon and paint animation accompanying a beautiful soundscape produced by a bafflingly large set of pedals and amps controlled by Kentaro Amano, and keyboards, flute, and drum and orchestral samples utilised by singer and multi-instrumentalist Yukino.

Kanina tell us a story

Next, Boneville Occident cranked the amps to 11 and gave a 3 guitar onslaught punctuated by vicious electronic noise and drum and bass-esque drums.

The chilling monochrome of Boneville Occident's set

This paved the way for Sgt., a veteran post-rock band from Tokyo. Characterised by an incredibly tight rhythm section overlaid with effects-laden electric violin and guitar, Sgt. got an amazing response from the crowd and it was clear that many had come specifically to see them. Such a rhythmically-led post-rock band is quite rare to find, and was illustrated by the fact that the energetic drummer positioned himself right at the front of the stage, with bass and guitar taking a back seat.

One of the mellower moments of Sgt.'s blistering set

Given such a high quality lineup, it was with slight nervous excitement that we took to the stage. The energy from the crowd was tangible and definitely contributed to our playing a livelier set than usual. At the end of our set, much to our surprise, the crowd started cheering 'one more!' in English. By this time, the event had seriously overrun, but we looked up to see the sound guys enthusiastically giving us the thumbs up. We closed the night playing the first song we wrote together as a band - Number 3.

A room with a view... special shout out to 10 Count (our friend with the cap!)

Special mention should also go to the laptop musicians of the evening, who satiated the crowd whilst the bands set up. The final DJ set of the night was more of a performance, as it involved both a DJ and a guitarist, who had never met before that day. It was also the only other act who were from outside Japan as the guitarist was from France. However, in our opinion, the best of the bunch was still our tour mate Fumi. Special credit is also due to her for battling through restricted space (half of her gear was on the floor) and also through unnecessarily loud sound-checks by some of the bands!

Once the audience had left, our night continued as Club Vijon held an afterparty for the bands. After a series of 'Kanpai!'s and thank yous for the night and each of the bands, everyone began drinking, trading CDs and autographs, eating the (amazing) Japanese junk food laid out, and practising their English. Non went on a photo-taking rampage which you can see below - as Sgt.'s drummer, Ono, would say... these are 'nice memories'!