Otomo Yoshihide

INSANITY IS FREEDOM COMFORMITY IS DEATH

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OTOMO YOSHIHIDE: LIVE IN RUSSIA - WE INSIST!

Sergey Kuryokhin died in July last year. He played with Otomo in Japan a year before. They liked each other. Last autumn they planned Japanese tour with American reeds player Keshavan Maslak. It didn't happen - Sergey died. But Otomo and Keshavan played several memorial concerts in Japan. Then they came to Russia to play two memorial concerts in Moscow and Petersburg. That was Otomo's way to Russia. That was a reason. Friendship and musicianship brought him to Russia.

Very short Russian tour had a title WITHOUT KURYOKHIN. And this tour took place in the frame of Russian memorial festival SERGEY PASSION. Whole autumn and winter long festival was organized by LONG ARMS AGENCY, IMA PRESS PUBLISHERS and SERGEY KURYOKHIN FOUNDATION. Many new music artists took part in this festival, such as Vyacheslav Ganelin, Vladimir Tarasov, Vladimir Chekasin, Vyacheslav Guyvoronsky, Vladimir Volkov, Arkady Shilkoper, Sergei Letov, Vladimir Rezitsky, Dieter Glawischnig, Nick Sudnik, Alex Tegin, Alex Aigi and his 4:33 group, dancers, poets, Maslak and Otomo. Keshavan and Otomo played duo concert in Moscow in Central House of Artist (Tsentral'nyi Dom Khudozhnika) on November 5th and second set (Guyvoronsky - Volkov Duo played in the first set) of the concert in Petersburg in House of Cinema (Dom Kino) on November 6th.

There was quite a lot of people in Moscow concert (around 400), concert hall was almost full. In Petersburg there were not so many people - maybe 200, and the audience was a bit COLDER. And that were really very special events. Russian audience absolutely did not get used to this kind of music like Otomo's mixes. There are many nights clubs with ordinary DJ's with techno and house mixes, but no one of them plays such noise postmodern stuff. Of course several Russian marginal musicians plays experimental music with tape loops and turntables, but they are almost unknown. So we can say that Russian audience is not used to listen to this music, but we can't say that this audience is not ready for it. It is really actual stuff and Russian audience is very open and grateful (and still not dead), has a good ears and an open mind. Because of that Keshavan and Otomo had very very warm and hearty reception with a long applauds and encore. Musicians succeeded to create on the stage the atmosphere of Kuryokhin's POP-MECHANIC show. that was kind of chamber duo POP-MECHANIC with a lot of funny action and very mixed music. Sometimes Keshavan played a role a rock star and shouted to the microphone FUCK and SHIT, also he made an gymnastic exercises with his guitar and bit it with a towel. Otomo threw away many of his vinyl records all over the stage, put clothes from suitcase into the piano, smashed up his chair and so on. And music! It was terrific.

WITHOUT KURIOKHIN - was a tittle of these concerts. But that was a wrong title. Actually, much better title for it could be - WITH KURIOKHIN. Because he was on stage! And not only in Otomo's CD player (Otomo used a lot of Kuryokhin's music and even said in interview for Russian TV that he had several megabytes of Kuryokhin in the memory of his sound machines). It seems that his spirit controlled everything what happened during these concerts. And that was a reason why one of the reviews in Moscow papers after the concert had a title MESSAGE TO SERGEY KURYOKHIN FROM SERGEY KURYOKHIN.

Russia, 1996