Nest Festival part 1

Last Sunday (10/19) was an event presented by O-Nest which didn’t take place at O-Nest, but O-East which is a bigger venue. The line-up however was entirely made up of typical O-Nest bands.

First up was d.v.d which apparently means “drums visual drums”. One drum set on each side of the stage and a big screen in the middle. There was also a third guy who made electronic sounds, but mostly it was just drums AND one hell of a cool visual animation on the screen which responded to the drum sounds. Very cool.

Website: http://www.dvd-3.com/

Newt up was 相対性理論 (soutaiseiriron) which means “relativity”. I’ve never heard them before, and I became suspicious when the female vocalist walked on stage seemingly against her will with the sulkiest face ever. She sat down on a chair and didn’t move an inch or say much through almost the entire set. No wait, she did stand up towards the end. It was probably an image thing, but at the same time as it was more interesting than other plain bands, it was kind of distracting. The music itself wasn’t too bad at all. Pretty catchy indiehooks, and charming quirkyness. I however spent most of my time wondering what was up with the singer. Did her boyfriend ditch her? Was she recently told that she only had one month to live, and as much as she wanted to go travelling around the world, the band forced her to finish the tour? Did the band originally kidnap some random woman off the streets and forced her to be their vocalist? Was she only allowed to come out from the basement when they were doing liveshows? Ahem. Anyways. They have an EP out. I think I need to get that one.

相対性理論 - LOVEずっきゅん


The two first acts played on the main stage, and I had no idea there was another, but suddenly the curtains went up on the right side of the stage and nhhmbase appeared. 「こんにちわ。サイドステージです」Funny. I was only able to see nhhmbase for a short while last time, but this time I really got to see how great they can be. After a couple of songs they became so energetic and crazy. Loved the vocalist. He was awesome. Performing after miss non-karisma didn’t hurt them either I suppose… Although they released their first full album this year it was the old songs like “ANA”, “PL” and “9/8” that made the audience and the band really go off.

9/8 live


Next performers were 渋さ知らズセブン (shibusa shirazu seven). I had no idea who they were either, so I was really surprised when they turned out to be an impro-band. I’m not into that kind of music at all, so after a few moments I quickly lost interest. By all means, they were talented musicians and every one of them had a solo. Except for the white guy who played the tuba. I wanted to see a tuba solo. The funny thing with impro though is that it seems that you can take a break whenever you want to, because there’s no fixed structure in the songs. The band also had some scary-looking dancers on stage. One was wearing a gigantic skull mask, which was creepy as hell.

After that group_inou performed at the side stage. Hip hop is another thing that doesn’t interest me much at all, but group_inou’s mix of hip hop and electro works perfectly. Their live shows in particular are amazingly energetic and so much fun. I think they were the act that made the audience dance the most this day. “Coming Out” and “Ship” are my favourites from their album, but all songs work well when they play live.

group_inou – COMING OUT


To be continued...