Nisennenmondai – Destination Tokyo

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Nisennenmondai
Smalltown Supersound
(2009)
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Masako Takada (guitar), Yuri Zaikawa (bass) and Sayaka Himeno (drums) met ten years ago in college, whereupon they founded their instrumental band Nisennenmondai. The band first got noticed after opening gigs in Japan for No Age and Battles, who fell in love with the band’s sound and vouched for their talents overseas. With heavy reliance on a 4/4 motorik beat, their music sounds like a louder, more rambunctious brand of seventies krautrock. Like Can and NEU! at their best, Nisennenmondai combine their musical chops and oddities to create highly danceable minimalist noise rock. The band has no vocalist, but that’s not to say that their music is mute. The ladies of Nisennenmondai carry on entire conversations through each song, albeit not with their voices. Masako Takada’s guitar sounds like the shredding of metal, Yuri Zaikawa’s bass provides the backbone and Himeno’s snare and hi-hat have a machine-like consistency that take a single listen to get the head bopping.

In “Miraabouru,” the band members perform their parts a capella, their voices sped up so they take on the machine-like intonations of their instruments. It’s a short recording, a minute long, that sounds like a playful demo session that later developed into the raucous monster that is “Disco.” This is music best listened to loud, on your headphones or in a venue full of sweaty people who want to knock each other down and pull each other up. “Mirrorball” is a head trip of a song, creating flourishes here and there that expand the band’s sound but don’t waver off in an incoherent mess. Guitar and drum solos abound as a hypnotic loop of strings and bass make for beautiful music.

Of all the genre throwbacks of the past decade, this exploration of krautrock/No Wave is perhaps one of the most welcome. “Destination Tokyo,” as its title suggests, is the kind of motorik throwback that effectively places the listener in motion. A catchy bassline, solid rhythm and wacky guitar grooves recreate the sensation of movement and relief that the Germans, back in the seventies, were onto something big, despite their critics’ condescending label of “krautrock.” The sound is alive and well, over three decades later and halfway across the world.

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http://www.nisennenmondai.com/

http://www.myspace.com/nisennenmondai