The Bowery Presents

The Bowery Ballroom upcoming shows

Asobi Seksu

Tyvek / Crocodiles

Venue:
The Bowery Ballroom
Date:
Thu 4/02
Notes:
18+
Doors: 8:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
$13 advance / $15 day of show
Tickets
Tyvek
myspace
ometimes the multitrack recorder isn't all set up and more often than not everything is completely crazy if not fucked, and everything has to come together anyway. This is a force against standing still and hiding in plain sight, unhappy nothing-to-do-ness and bad atmospheres. This is not an apology, if you don't like the sound, buZZ off. Treads through sub-USA travels messed up always worried keep moving, pleasant after thoughts, funny comments worth some occasional repeating, friendships, pagan style celebration, Hittite war drums, post institutional loud buzzing, floating into someone else's weird political unrealities, watching a fight, seeing an accident, being in an accident, watching everything get torn down, waking up everyday to the biggest fiction ever (it could just as well get wiped off the map, really) and maybe after 15 hours or so later you sit down and hope, and maybe even feel that you remain fundamentally intact and still human.
Asobi Seksu
official website
myspace
While Asobi Seksu's creative core explored music at an early age (lead vocalist/keyboardist Yuki Chikudate got standing ovations at child prodigy recitals when she was just 8; guitarist/vocalist James Hanna bounced between sludgy hardcore and Mogwai-schooled post-rock in his teens), their potential 'career' wasn't put into perspective until a stint at the Manhattan School of Music. And by put into perspective, we mean finding out what they didn't want to do.

"It was a miracle I graduated at all," adds Chikudate. "I love playing the piano, but three hours of it—breaking it down, measure by measure, note by note—makes my mind go numb."

Soon after escaping the world of sheet music and classical composition, Hanna began tackling dreamy-but-disorienting soundscapes for the first time. He quickly shifted his focus from singing to starry-eyed chords, however, with Chikudate falling into the frontwoman position without missing a beat.

Asobi Seksu released its self-titled, learn-as-we-go-along debut in 2004. The record was essentially a demo recording and was received much better than they expected.
In 2006 they released their critically-acclaimed breakthrough, Citrus, and came into their own as songwriters and live performers. For two years Asobi Seksu toured the globe and further honed its sound.

For the making of Hush, the group's third LP and Polyvinyl debut., the band enlisted producer Chris Zane (Passion Pit, Les Savy Fav), who had also produced Citrus. “Hush was written while we felt destroyed," explains Hanna, quite simply. Which is funny, because the entire record has a phoenix rising vibe to it—a clear sense of shimmering, dew-draped riffs and spiral staircase melodies that are occasionally blurred by bits of guitar violence and sputtering drums (see the firework finale climax of "Me and Mary" and the liftoff portions of "Sing Tomorrows Praise" and "Glacially").

"We knew we didn't want to do 7,000 reverb guitars this time," says Hanna, "So we stripped the sound down and built it back up from there."
Another thing Asobi Seksu's avoided is sheer shoegaze-pop revivalism. While they listen to a lot of into-the-ether music—hence their tickets to both of My Bloody Valentine's reunion gigs—Hanna and Chikudate are too obsessed with the expansive possibilities of sound to explore one well-treaded path.

"Every shoegaze song is the same rhythmically," says Hanna, explaining that he'd be terribly bored if he followed that template.

"Their parts don't propel into other parts," adds Chikudate. "Us, we meander a little more, so it's not just one big wall of noise."
Wall of noise? "Layers," for one, is downright gorgeous, suggesting an afternoon spent in a gently-shaken snow globe. And then there are the clusters of ambient Eno effects that close Hush's Technicolor curtain. That's what happens when you learn how to use space and dynamics to your advantage, skirting what some might refer to as "Kevin Shields syndrome."
"I've realized that while something might sound awesome in my head," explains Hanna, "Adding 50 layers to it might make it sound like shit because you lose a lot of the details. Some parts have only one guitar this time.
He pauses and adds with a smile, "We agonized over that guitar, though."
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