Vu Nhat Tan – A Night of Electronic Music and Heavy Rock

Saturday – July 27 – Hanoi Rock City: lovers of all things experimental and heavy experienced an extravaganza of sounds (courtesy of artists from Japan, Vietnam and the UK) that would stay with them and their ears for a long time to come.

Josh Kopecek opened the proceedings with his trademark fragments of noises blending samples of traditional Vietnamese music with electronic elements he generated live onstage. Masked, and looming over a table consisting of a Mac and an array of homemade electronic circuits, to uninitiated eyes he might have been confused with a mere DJ doing his job. The process, in fact, was one of utmost elaboration and genuine artistry.

The Onion Cellar’s press release was spot-on: “GENTLE OHM could easily be amongst the British composer’s (who, in the past, has been writing contemporary classical suites or bending the sh*t out of homemade circuit boards) most electronic, adventurous and elaborate offerings to date. What we encounter is an ominously cavernous blanket of noise, interwoven with hauntological samples from bygone eras of traditional Vietnamese music, dipped in modern industrial colors, then manically live-processed in between dub-like beats into elaborate streams of consciousness. The resulting maelstrom is a canopy of dappled light over and through the sound with which he works.” However, Gentle Ohm’s performance was too short for the audience, already filled the whole room by this time, to work out exactly what they were dealing with. It would have still been preferable by this writer, and it would have undoubtedly made the concert more complete, had Gentle Ohm played for twice the length of his set, taking the slot of the Vietnamese band taking the stage after him.

To this writer, Augustory unfortunately did not ‘rock’ enough and left no impressions save for their youthful enthusiasm. It is, of course, worth mentioning that this was only the second ever live appearance of the band.

On to the main courses. Tatsuya Yoshida (as Ruins Alone) and KK Null were beyond impressive! Myself being someone who treads in these circles, I was most impressed with the simplicity of their setup: laptops connected with popular, cheap, easy-to-find, and definitely not hi-tech, electronic gear, resulting in vast streams of music/noises, experimental and heavy and anything in between, that managed to transcend the whole room. And at most (during their set as Zeni Geva), there were only the 2 of them on stage.

Tatsuya Yoshida played RUINS – “a unique form of manic and twisted progressive rock. Many RUINS compositions employ odd time signatures, sudden tempo changes, and passages of heavily processed noise. The overall sound is chaotic yet precise, noisy yet harmonious, catchy yet repelling, frenetic yet disciplined” – stated the press release and those were precisely what he showcased – rough, tortuous, and in perpetual motion, so that the audience “would find it impossible to dance to this music, much as they want to”.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n8_0oT_qwY[/youtube]

I have long been aware of KK NULL’s reputation as “one of the top names in Japanese noise music and in a larger context, one of the great cult artists in experimental music since the early 80′s”. This time, his set was somehow strangely ..serene, at least much more serene than during the days when we found ourselves on the same bill at an experimental music festival in Perth, West Australia in 2003.

But his set with Tatsuya Yoshida, as ZENI GEVA, right after that, was properly heavy and extremely good! On stage, KK Null used a MacBook Air connected to 2 Kaoss-pads, effects, guitar, and an Alesis sampler (borrowed from Phu Pham / Dirty Fingrz) – all non-expensive, easy to find and easy to use. Yet the storms of sounds and music he and Tatsuya created, ranging from ‘mellow’ to ‘twisted’, from feather-high to heavy-low,  all of which immediately made most of the audience headbang, drowned in layers and layers of intensity.

“It is not at all about technology or gear, it is one’s talent and creativity that lead to artistic success” – screamed a member of the audience into my ears.

Indeed, it is all about talent and creativity!

Thanks to The Onion Cellar and Hanoi Rock City for organising this exciting concert.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d66Lj9TAXw[/youtube]

Translated by H, photos and video by Mathias Rossignol (The Onion Cellar)